born on the right time. 2023. @marenruben. mixed media
MAREN RUBEN
ÉTAT D’AMOUR FRAGMENTÉ.
PISSENLIT.
HERBES TROUBLANTES
PISSENLIT.
HERBES TROUBLANTES
24 January - 20 April 2025
Via Tamaro 3
CH-6500 Bellinzona
CH-6500 Bellinzona
14:00 – 18:00
ÉTAT D’AMOUR FRAGMENTÉ. PISSENLIT. HERBES TROUBLANTES (The Age of Fragmented Love. Bedwetter. Disturbing Herbs) is the evocative title of the exhibition dedicated to the German artist Maren Ruben, born in 1967, who has been active in France since 1998.
The Stato amoroso frammentato (Fragmented amorous state) is the main title of a sort of thematic and design-oriented triptych, to be created at the MACT/CACT in the course of three years, of which
Pissenlit. Herbes troublantes is the subtitle of this first stage.
Ruben started her artistic life with painting and tactile interaction with an essentially traditional medium, that of paper, which she transforms and at the same time nullifies, making it her own, almost as though it were a membrane, a skin. Her own skin. Her choice of materials is truly unusual.
Thus do her support and physical approach gradually lose their objective function and their functionality in the course of the creative process, becoming an infinite element or just an amplifier of the artist’s corporal, bodily and internal music. The process of metamorphosis, yet of dialogue, between the artist and her medium, between objectivism and soul, prevails over her metier as an artist, in which the influence of a certain French thinking and philosophy are more easily discernible in the development of and approach to the act than in the actual work itself.
The papers on which she draws with her mixed but traditional techniques – it’s almost as though they were the pages of an never-ending diary – are fragile, thin, precarious and in some places transparent,like so many tiny accessories of an equally fragile, yet never weak, feminine universe. And while this condemnation of craft personality, to become an almost uniquely internal artistic strength, constitutes a characteristic of freedom and of catharsis in Ruben, the artist at the same time offers us a renewed vision of a nomad Shadow of ethereal lightness, once again midway between figurative reality and abstract truth. Once you pass beyond a certain borderline, you perceive that the impalpable becomes almost eternal and absolute, where passion or intelligence, or the heart, stands revealed at multiple levels. Timelessness is one of art’s finest ambitions and without time there is no excuse for change, for seeking a state of grace.
Maren Ruben’s journey makes an attempt on this path, where nothing is taken for granted but the determination to search repeatedly beyond what is possible.
Mario Casanova, Bellinzona, 2024.
Translation by Pete Kercher
The Stato amoroso frammentato (Fragmented amorous state) is the main title of a sort of thematic and design-oriented triptych, to be created at the MACT/CACT in the course of three years, of which
Pissenlit. Herbes troublantes is the subtitle of this first stage.
Ruben started her artistic life with painting and tactile interaction with an essentially traditional medium, that of paper, which she transforms and at the same time nullifies, making it her own, almost as though it were a membrane, a skin. Her own skin. Her choice of materials is truly unusual.
Thus do her support and physical approach gradually lose their objective function and their functionality in the course of the creative process, becoming an infinite element or just an amplifier of the artist’s corporal, bodily and internal music. The process of metamorphosis, yet of dialogue, between the artist and her medium, between objectivism and soul, prevails over her metier as an artist, in which the influence of a certain French thinking and philosophy are more easily discernible in the development of and approach to the act than in the actual work itself.
The papers on which she draws with her mixed but traditional techniques – it’s almost as though they were the pages of an never-ending diary – are fragile, thin, precarious and in some places transparent,like so many tiny accessories of an equally fragile, yet never weak, feminine universe. And while this condemnation of craft personality, to become an almost uniquely internal artistic strength, constitutes a characteristic of freedom and of catharsis in Ruben, the artist at the same time offers us a renewed vision of a nomad Shadow of ethereal lightness, once again midway between figurative reality and abstract truth. Once you pass beyond a certain borderline, you perceive that the impalpable becomes almost eternal and absolute, where passion or intelligence, or the heart, stands revealed at multiple levels. Timelessness is one of art’s finest ambitions and without time there is no excuse for change, for seeking a state of grace.
Maren Ruben’s journey makes an attempt on this path, where nothing is taken for granted but the determination to search repeatedly beyond what is possible.
Mario Casanova, Bellinzona, 2024.
Translation by Pete Kercher
