The choice of tones and colors plays a very particular role in Daniel Mattar’s practice, which he distills with meticulous care... Colors are never there by chance; they convey hidden meanings, codes, taboos or prejudices. They are a reflection of our daily life, our language and our imagination. They are neither immutable nor universal and have a history.
- Martha Kirszenbaum
In his emblematic Dialogue series developed in 2010, the Korean minimalist painter and sculptor Lee Ufan adorns his canvases placed on the ground with a brushstroke of oil color, mixed with a natural pigment. Twelve squares of white canvas each display a blue-gray gradient, revealing a movement that is both precise and intense, on an empty white background. His gesture is slow, precise, combined with total control of breathing and body movements, and he conscientiously leaves an empty space, creating a link between the affected part and the intact part. A dialogue is then created between the elements of his work, but also between the interior and exterior world. This notion of an open site in which things and space interact in a living way seems to run through all of Daniel Mattar’s work. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1971 and now based in Lisbon, Mattar rethinks the relationship between photography, painting and sculpture, playing with the interstice spaces that infiltrate between each of the media. Similarly to Lee Ufan, his protean artistic practice suggests the idea of a mental space residing in the relationship among painted, unpainted, occupied and empty spaces. He thus transforms painted objects into photographic digital form, which he reconditions again into a sculptural object, and it is the balance of the relationships among the three, more specifically among volume, color and light, which establishes the very meaning of his works.
To transition from a pictorial image to a photograph and then to an object, Daniel Mattar deploys a range of diverse techniques, generally starting from found materials, on which he uses a painting gesture, before photographing the result to reprint it then in large format. He thus recycles everyday images and materials which he covers with a thick layer of oil paint before photographing the result and then producing a large format photograph. A utopian of the banal, he offers advertising residue and forgotten images a second life thanks to the light and shadows that photography allows him to explore. From a technical point of view, he uses a digital sensor with a medium format camera, which is twice the size of a 35mm camera sensor, and Japanese macro lenses. He then prints the images on diasec process via a pigment print, then laminates under transparent plexiglass, a process during which adhesion takes place chemically when two liquid components come into contact, allowing a smooth and flawless surface to be obtained, and with an accentuated color contrast...
The choice of tones and colors plays a very particular role in Daniel Mattar’s practice, which he distills with meticulous care. Taking inspiration from the color charts of hardware stores, he composes his own palette with evocative names, such as titanium white, the most brilliant opaque white, used throughout the history of art; Payne’s gray, a dark gray, with a blue tendency, widely used in watercolors and obtained by mixing several pigments; or ultramarine blue, a deep and historically precious blue because it’s obtained by grinding fine lapis lazuli and is among the most expensive pigments. Its synthesis in the 19th century will make it one of the least expensive. Colors are never there by chance; they convey hidden meanings, codes, taboos or prejudices. They are a reflection of our daily life, our language and our imagination. They are neither immutable nor universal and have a history...
Martha Kirszenbaum, 2023
Essay: Martha Kirszenbaum
Exhibition set-up: Pedro Canoilas
Realization: Brisa Galeria