Friday, 14 February 2014

Maya Hayuk and a sense of scale


colorful art by urban artist Maya Hayuk
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Maya Hayuk
Maya Hayuk
I have just been introduced to artist MAYA HAYUK (mayahayuk.com) by Judith, an MA13 colleague.
I am totally captured (mesmerised?) by Hayuk's colour, style and the huge scale of many of her works.
Hayuk speaks of colour being magical and even spiritual; a cause of transformation. She speaks of her working practice / painting, as being a meditation
In 2011, I visited NY and felt invigorated by seeing many huge scale works in various warehouse galleries. On return I started to play with dribbled paint on large sheets of brown paper. Since then, scale has been a challenge to my thinking and practice. To be important, a piece seems to have to be large..... which is fine for an exhibition in a large contemporary art gallery .... but my critical spirit says - what about cost, studio size, storage, exhibiting (where?) and who would buy such large scale works etc. etc.
I often wondered about these issues whilst living on the Isle of Man, but things seem very similar here in N.Yorkshire.
Hayuk seems to get around many of these issues by painting directly onto walls, both inside and out.
There does seem to be something more powerful about large scale works, that dwarf the human frame ..... such scale some how points out our rightful place in the scheme of things. Gerhard Richter speaks in an interview with TIME magazine about art being like a religious search for God (whom he doesn't believe in) where the art is the belief, hope or ideal.
Both Hayuk and Richter seem to question the need for any more paintings. Richter says 'We don't need painting anymore, just entertainment'. He goes on to say that Museums / Galleries are full of nice,intersting things, whereas they used to contain 'important' things. His latest work on patterns was said to be like wrapping paper, with which he didn't disagree. Hayuk is also involved in design and creates t-shirts and CD covers.
However, I do so love the colour and style of Hayuk's work; she works so intuitvely   ..... and I wonder what type of paint she uses: it seems so fresh and vibrant and often translucent.
Light installations /projections came to mind as I watched videos of her work. Memories came back to me of being part of a workshop on the Scottish island of Iona in 2012, where we projected creative imagery onto the ancient stone walls inside the Abbey. There have also been projections of light on the outside of church buildings such asYork Minster and the Lindisfarne Gospels onto Durham Cathedral. I am also reminded of the coloured oil /water projections on the disco walls of my youth. All these seem to be about transformation, the alchemy of space.
At present however, I seem to be reflecting on whether smaller works can create an intimate, fragile and  beautiful transformatory and contemplative space. Books and icons used to be used in this way, do they still have that potentiality in a contemporary, post-modern time? Perhaps this is something I could explore further.


           








































    







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