Marie Orensanz


Mari Nalte Orensanz is an Argentine artist. Her artwork examines the integration of thought and matter as a methodology to obtain a social consciousness. Orensanz's experience of Argentina's "Dirty War" has influenced her artwork and translated itself into the work Pensar es un Hecho Revolucionario. Located in the Parque de la Memoria in Bueno Aires, it is attributed as a monument for the victims of state terrorism.
Orensanz has been credited as a pioneer of conceptual art in Argentina and her experimentation with geometry, mathematics and philosophy later developed into her use of different materials. She is recognized for her use of the Carrara marble, ultimately displacing the canvas. The Carrara marble encapsulates the development of her manifesto "Fragmentism", which accounts for the singular embrace of the incomplete.
Orensanz has showcased her collections in museums around the world, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires.

Early life

Initially, Marie had the intention of studying law, but later abandoned the idea when she took a nine month trip to Europe with her family. It was this experience that marked a keen interest in the world of art as she was able to find a new mode of communication through it. She began her art education training with contemporary artists in Argentina, Emilio Pettoruti and Antonio Segui, where she learned about analytic abstraction and figurative expressionism respectively. Her experience working with them was foundational in the way that she constructs space in creating her works. In 1972, Orensanz moves to Milan for a period of time, where she finds a new material that becomes the highlight of her artistic trajectory, the Carrara marble.
Eventually, she becomes a naturalized French citizen and currently alternates her stay between Mountrouge, France and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Argentina's "Dirty War"

Orensanz defines herself as a nomadic artist as she travels back and forth from her birth country of Argentina and Europe, which served as a refuge during Argentina's last military dictatorship that lasted from 1974 to 1983. Orensanz's work Pensar es un hecho revolucionario was selected among 633 projects to commemorate the disappeared individuals of Argentina. This piece is formed from two equal iron parts that are separated from one another by a small distance. According to Orensanz, this intentional separation forces the spectator to reflect in order to appropriately read the perforated phrase that is the title. In a catalogue, she expresses that now of the motives for her dedication is the fight against injustice translated through artistic expression.
Orensanz discovered the political potential in her work through her installation El pueblo de la Gallareta. She had created the installation in response to a workers' rally that took place and included their pamphlet on the gallery walls. Only a day after the opening of her exhibition the show was cancelled as the government noticed the message depicted through her work.

Conceptual art

The emergence of "conceptual art" sought for an idea or concept to take precedence over the traditional formal and material qualities of art. Artists during this time period sought to incorporate text as artwork as a means to incorporate a double meaning. In doing so, Orensanz explores the relationship of text with the chosen object. Her abstract forms are iconic in her conceptualism, which surpasses minimalism where only the idea is represented. Orensanz is able to most effectively express her ideas through the use of symbols. Dots, arrows, broken cars and fallen trees are each given a precise meaning. For example, a dotted line may be indicative of time and a broken car may represent the chaos of the city.
In 2002, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires houses her installation,¿Para quién suenan las campanas?, which consists of a series of seventeen white bells that propel from the ceiling. Each bell consists of phrase that serves as an answer to the question posed by the title of installation, such as "for those who doubt" or "for those who judge". It is in this way that Oresanz is able to create a dialogue concerning the injustices present in society. In particular, she finds interest in the way in which people move about in the exhibition, experiencing its spatial element.
Some of the works Orensanz is most recognized for are the following:
According to Christine Frèrot, Marie Orensanz explores different ways to integrate thought and matter, questioning both the world and society simultaneously. She has been driven by key experiences in her life that conduce her to create a social consciousness in her work. Early in her artistic career, she added an 'e' to her name after an incident where a gallery owner has mistaken her for a man. The man admired her work, but remarked that there was a major defect in her work, she was a woman and that her career as an artist would be limited by it. This experience marked her awareness of gender discrimination.

Fragmentism

Frèrot has stated that the concept of fragmentism is practiced by Orensanz through her selection of the Carrara marble. She questions the traditional notions of sculpture as she purposely leaves the marble in its natural state of environment as she views it as part of a larger whole and finds beauty in its broken condition. She uses the color white to convey neutrality and contrasts it with the color black to characterize a dynamic quality. Additionally, according to Orensanz, thoughts can also be fragmented and relies heavily on the "intersection of the fragments with the viewer's own thoughts and experiences." Later on she developed a theory called Fragmentism and writes a manifesto in Spanish, English and Italian. It reads, "Fragmentism searches for integration of a part with a totality; transforms by multiple readings in an object non-terminate and unlimited, traversing time and space."

Selected solo exhibitions