"The
bottom of the sea has always fascinated mankind - first and foremost
the artist. This fascination may be due to the sense of an alien
environment, or to the refracted light that transforms volumes,
alters shapes and gives a different appearance to the creatures
that live in the sea. Sometimes these creatures may borrow the
movements of the human body and seem familiar and humanized, swaying
to the rhythms of the water; at other times they may resemble
the threatening, archetypal monsters that haunt our nightmares.
It all depends on the eye that is looking at them and the fantasies
they may trigger.
Seaweed,
plankton, micro-organisms, amoebas, phosphorescent plants and
translucent jellyfish that flash like fireflies in the dusk -
this is the material that feeds Pares Mallis’ imagination.
All the diverse universe that stirs gently on the sea-bed is given
shape and form, colour and hue, in the light blues, the greens,
the dark blues and mauves that the artist uses as she skillfully
gives it substance on the canvas. Only in the two large paintings
of swimming pools is man present, enjoying the blessing of water
in his material prosperity with all the arrogance of his species;
he neither knows nor wants to know that the ceramic sculptures
depicting packs of water are not just yet one more luxuriously
packaged product but the very womb of his existence, the umbilical
cord which he may not sever.
Behind
all this, the artist expresses a philosophy and a purpose: to
recreate and reanimate the world in its protoplasmic and original
form. To depict the very meaning of life in the cells of which
it is composed, and at the same time to remind us discreetly of
the life-giving power of water. Nevertheless, the artist avoids
any shrill ecological proclamation of the threat posed to the
entire planet by the shortage of water and our wasteful use of
it. Instead, she paints. In whispers, echoes and reverberations
we may catch the voices of Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe
and the other modernists.
Pares Mallis is a descendant of the abstract expressionists yet
does not experiment in the name of some avant-garde style from
which all the juice has been squeezed. On the contrary, she attempts
to reconcile it with a fertile re-reading of it. Thus her work
acquires the sense of an ominous prophesy that undermines the
future. With brush in hand, the painter focuses her gaze deep
into a world that claims its right to come to the surface and
command our attention. She achieves this goal with excellent aesthetic
results. "