Perpetual Blue – From Claude Monet to Oscar Murillo

00:00:09: It took Claude Monet three years, from nineteen fourteen to nineteen seventeen... ...to finish his nephéas en fleurs otherwise known as blooming water lilies.

00:00:18: It sounds strange perhaps but these serene paintings are actually emblems of global trade….

00:00:23: …of the circulation goods and blindness.

00:00:27: Blooming Water Lillies is a mesmerizing painting.

00:00:29: you can see the green foliage in his garden in Giverny delicately interplaying with surface-of-the-water Floating lily pads of blue and violet drift across a horizonless pond where light seems to dissolve into its depths.

00:00:44: And these flowers have these alluring yellow stamens in their center, they hover within the abstraction as a pop-of color.

00:00:52: Monet had foreseen these flowers at Paris World's Fair in eighteen eighty nine.

00:00:56: They were white in Europe right up until then.

00:00:59: that was until a horticulturalist crossed native European varieties with tropical lilies.

00:01:05: And so came the serene yellow that explodes from Monet's canvases.

00:01:10: These perfect lilies, intentionally or not speak to economy and power – their soft impressions carry larger forces…and it is not exactly an exaggeration to say something of a wider world is folded into Monet's most serene

00:01:23: pictures.".

00:01:25: That brings me back in Oscar Murillo's work.

00:01:28: A contemporary artist whose practice spans painting participatory projects video sound installation makes work that tries to encompass the world in similar ways.

00:01:38: Ideas and language slip across boundaries, they intermingle and circulate... And just like clusters of water lilies and moneys pond you will find a much wider world than the Marx-Omoreos canvases.

00:01:48: I cannot think another artist working today whose practice is weaving a connective tissue across time & space as if it's painting of global landscape.

00:02:05: My name is Kay Brown, an editor and writer And this is a podcast about how paintings can hold time, moving between two artists of very different times and spaces.

00:02:15: The French impressionist painter Claude Monet and the Colombian-born London based artist Oscar Murillo.

00:02:22: This episode considers how color –and blue in particular– as well as marks—can carry more than their parts.

00:02:29: It's about how colour holds memory and how painting —good painting—resists.

00:02:33: easy resolution.

00:02:42: Mille has thought a lot about Monet.

00:02:45: I don't think that water lilies were even important for Monet.

00:02:48: I think it was just a motif, the garden was construction... I mean gardens are constructed but i think such was the radicality of his pursuit as an artist and he created The Gardening in order to paint.

00:03:02: I Think money is an artisan.

00:03:04: all the critical importance Is undeniable.

00:03:10: Recently In An Essay He Described Monet As Iconic.

00:03:12: In Warholian Sense He was known for painting an image obsessively, serially over and over again trying to capture it at different stages with different variations of light.

00:03:24: Monet spoke in letters about looking for something instantaneous in his paintings the way that light spreads over everything At Desiminsk and the Museum Barberini in Potsdam just outside Berlin a major grouping of Murillo's works has been on view this year alongside seminal paintings by Claude Monet Of which The Barberine holds forty.

00:03:43: It is world-class collection.

00:03:46: The exhibition Collective Osmosis, curated by Anna Schneider and Daniel Milnes of Das Minsk marks the first collaboration between these two institutions which are sister venues both financed by the Hasso-Platner Foundation.

00:03:58: Crucially for the first time ever, Monetes were moved from the Barberini over to Das Minske And while it might seem at first like an unlikely pairing, Muriel has been engaging with Monet's practice for a while.

00:04:09: .The title Collective osmosis says something about why Osmosis connotes a substance moving from one side of the semi-permeable membrane to another, a transference in other words and seeking an equilibrium.

00:04:23: As such osmosis for Murillo is metaphoric for porousness or exchange between these two painters, their serial abstractions mark making use color.

00:04:35: but Murillo also transforms museum into a site Between him and Monet, but also between people who come to the museum... ...and can paint on a monumental work outside.

00:04:48: Oscar and I were together at a recording studio in Berlin recently... ...discussing his works and his continuous interest in Monet.

00:04:55: For me it's more of a broader idea of an assertion.

00:05:00: Assurping Monet Like when you hijack Monet.

00:05:05: And what i mean is that Monet has critical mass.

00:05:09: The masses in general, like university speaking around the world will know who Monet is.

00:05:17: There's critical acclaim there of course beauty... ...the thing that then makes it kind of appealing to me was the fact he was suffering from cataracts and so all this mainstream critically acclaimed tech you know, the virtuosity take radicality in the context of his practice.

00:05:43: And then off course... The personal thing that just like this is the artist was the fact that towards the end of its life he will suffer him from cataracts.

00:05:51: and I thought Paris an entry point for me to antagonize beauty.

00:05:59: Though the art of Mario and Monet are disparate In many ways there's something approachable and universal about themes they each explore.

00:06:06: There are formalities, of course that one can find between the paintings.

00:06:10: An interest in meticulous craft mark-making and impressions that emerge from it... there's also a sense of density.

00:06:18: That artists don't sit together entirely harmoniously creates an electrifying tension.

00:06:24: It is the gaps or incongruence which makes things interesting And much like Mario's practice no need to tightly resolve this.

00:06:31: The show folds time and distance across several axes at once.

00:06:35: There are the monnaies, these incredible works more than a hundred years old.

00:06:40: And then there's a survey of more that a decade of Mario's own practice.

00:06:44: and Then they're remarks have an uncountable number of others whispering across this exhibition to.

00:06:49: Merlot's practice includes collective paintings and social mappings and drawings called frequencies Which I collected from all over the world via participatory projects.

00:06:58: This non-linear approach to making work taps into something deeply human and continuous.

00:07:04: But if there's one person in this art world that understands the politics of institutions, it is this guy who sometimes comes across shy.

00:07:14: You know Oscar Murillo?

00:07:16: He understands the

00:07:17: policies.".

00:07:18: That's Bonaventure So-Bijeng Ndikong director of Berlin's Haus der Kotuerende Weltz Who was most recently The Curator Of the twenty-twenty five.

00:07:26: Sao Paolo Bagnon.

00:07:27: Maria Was a part of This showing A collective painting.

00:07:31: It is the dismantling of those structures.

00:07:36: So if he invites twenty-something people from his village in Colombia to come to the Tate and sing three bands, they come together and it pieces them together under their experimenting you know?

00:07:51: And I've been there!

00:07:52: I have seen this happening a few years ago during the Venice Biennial and this exhibition.

00:07:59: we did Cameroon from Ghana, from Colombia and they all came together.

00:08:04: And we're making music in this holy grail of the visual art... ...and slowly putting holes!

00:08:15: Making it porous You understand?

00:08:18: It's still there We can see but is also very transparent.

00:08:23: I think that what i love about Oscar work too.

00:08:28: He concerned about something much larger than the too often simplistic, identitarian, simplistic structures we put into or sometimes you want to fit ourselves in.

00:08:47: I think his antennae are there and he feels things... And if wanted do something about humanity.

00:08:59: I think he's one of the artists for our time that has gotten an incredible understanding.

00:09:07: Of this plurality, you know?

00:09:11: Was it a credible understanding or at least is in research to understand how we struggle to conjugate humanity from its own biography but also the interest in connecting to other peoples in the

00:09:29: world.

00:09:42: A century after Monet's death, the relevance and awareness and value of his work is unwavering.

00:09:48: To this end several Monetes have moved across a city of Potsdam.

00:09:52: It's hard to over-emphasize the effort required to transport a work by Monet.

00:09:57: In this historic loan.

00:09:58: three works traveled across Potsdem from the Barbarini to go on view at Desminsk.

00:10:04: To bring a Monet any distance is highly involved process

00:10:08: It doesn't matter whether they're traveling out of the country or with only this one kilometer across a bridge, that there's same kind intensive process for care and security.

00:10:21: And all measurements you have to take in order make it

00:10:24: possible.".

00:10:25: That was Anna Schneider co-curator exhibition director of Das Minsk

00:10:30: And it was only like when we were already far in the process that I learned, out of three paintings currently on view here at Das Minsk two had never travelled since they're in their collection.

00:10:43: So even large exhibitions with important partners from the Museum Barbarini... They weren't allowed to travel because what is takes and it's just due to legal construction was possible, so in that sense it's really a unique opportunity for us.

00:11:06: But of course when you're involved with this whole process also start thinking about the economy around transporting goods and transport very valuable goods does have a resonance with Oscar Murillo's work who has been thinking of circulation in many ways, like... In different forms.

00:11:33: The circulation of objects and goods but also people.

00:11:38: And now with Monet that is the circulation in terms of landscape water nature comes into the play.

00:11:50: But I think there is definitely something behind the pleasure that we have looking at these beautiful masterpieces, but when you start working with them to see the whole operation behind displaying a work like that and moving it in a way becomes very tangible.

00:12:16: Climate Control's specialist crates and roots plan down to the smallest detail.

00:12:20: Key parts of Murillo's practice are totally antithetical to this, And as you move through Desminsk sound leaks between rooms.

00:12:28: You can hear a video playing footage from Murillo collective painting session.

00:12:33: The Barberini also features a monumental work by Murillo on view with a group of Monet paintings Meaning that at both museums, there are rooms of function like portals folding the distance and perspectives in time unto themselves.

00:12:46: Part of this strategy is to create a sense of permeability between spaces And in particular transcend the boundaries between institution and world outside.

00:12:56: In case of Das Minsk & Barberini it's about collapsing distances and playing with

00:13:03: scale which is true, when you get to that level.

00:13:13: You've broken all boundaries now.

00:13:16: so what does it mean

00:13:18: for

00:13:19: a young artist from Columbia?

00:13:23: and maybe some expectations are there for what he should be doing right?

00:13:28: Remember somebody in the audience asked that question about on his whiteness and so forth.

00:13:37: an Oscar's response was Yeah, my name and look at me.

00:13:41: What does it say?

00:13:42: It says on the one hand this is your canon And we will make it porous.

00:13:50: To me if there's a perfect notion of decanonization Is not necessarily dismantling The Canon but making it

00:13:58: Porous.

00:14:00: We can see through it ,we understand it .We relate to it because that of human expression, right?

00:14:11: You can stand in front of a Monet and you get to chill.

00:14:16: And it's irrelevant if he were born in South Africa or Scandinavia—you got to chill!

00:14:24: So that is what he relates too.

00:14:31: At Desmond's on the Barberini, Marie-Oak chose two different iterations of Monet's grain stacks sit apart from one another but together.

00:14:40: At the time that Monet was making these, was when France was rapidly changing.

00:14:45: Industrialization was altering the landscape and so to me these are not simply pastoral views.

00:14:51: These paintings by Monet speak of logic urban centers somewhere beyond painting railways seasonal labour economies feeding cattle.

00:15:00: Ortrude Westheider director of Barberini describes how Monet would have a gardener carefully brush off water lilies in lily pads which would get soot and dust from passing train traffic.

00:15:12: In Mario's work, the folding of distance does a similar thing.

00:15:16: Rural and far-off realities appear closer to us in urban centres where his works tend be on view in institutions The Houses Of Parliament.

00:15:24: Sunset dated from nineteen hundred to nineteen oh three is On View at Des Mints.

00:15:29: Monet's parliament series depicts a view of London houses of parliament on tames in many different lights Painted at the turn of century in the final years of Queen Victoria's reign, one can think about British Empire and its colonialism being administered from this building.

00:15:44: In that sense as Murillo has put it The work quote conveys a great darkness.

00:15:50: Indeed the building itself is rendered as shadow by Monet And that shadow according to Murillo quote arises for Monet painterly refinement but also carries historical truth within It.

00:16:01: That Truth in other words is the fact of imperialism and industrialization detected in these scenes.

00:16:08: Murillo continues, quote...

00:16:21: I'm no interested like bringing politics with capital letters into my work—with Bonaventure and because their friend….

00:16:30: And he was saying well you know it's going so bad that we got to use poetry, you know.

00:16:35: So that's kind of remarkable and it was really interesting when he said that.

00:16:40: And I cannot believe in that.

00:16:42: as a means too again alluding the title collective osmosis has a means let us find common ground where can begin to ease into each other.

00:16:55: for the longest time now We've been instrumentalized.

00:17:02: the human being, you know radical streams.

00:17:05: Here's an excerpt of Mario reading a poem he wrote which she shared in a recent talk with Ndikom.

00:17:09: hearing mario's words and considering his practice in general one could think of it like mapping but not in the Cartesian sense this is mapping as network building and mario has referred to it as social mapping in particular when speaking about his massive participatory drawing projects.

00:17:24: speed of flight six hundred miles per hour the sea geographies terrain, labor repetition.

00:17:36: people many more public and more people.

00:17:41: profound statements buried utterance of love protest an emoji a sea of marks condensed time the harnessing of thoughts energies spirits all manifestations in color frantically, frenetically awareness of places time defaults thought into a stream of unconscious

00:18:17: scores.

00:18:19: In twenty-twenty four at Tate Modern Mario created work called Flooded Garden A monumental participatory installation in the main turbine hall.

00:18:28: All told there were five hundred square meters of rock canvas mounted on five meter tall scaffolds.

00:18:33: These were in a curved effect, reminiscent of Monet's water lilies installed on curved walls at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris just after his death.

00:18:42: Mario takes the immersiveness one step further —a tape.

00:18:46: modern visitors painted messages names and small gestures that slowly layered back towards abstraction.

00:18:52: In Potsdam there is similar work on view—a curved canvas standing outside the museum.

00:18:57: Like a natural landscape, it shifts each day as different visitors come and engage with its surface doodling flowers their names or maybe just a zigzag pattern.

00:19:07: Art Murillo has said is a communal project

00:19:11: Even when the commission by the Tate at the turbine hall.

00:19:17: that was this very strong performative work using Monet as vessel.

00:19:23: one of things took place we made a grid like a color chart almost, we designed it and the same color was supplied to an audience that would come to participate.

00:19:36: So one color let's say every two or three hours.

00:19:40: so blue you know darker blue or yellow again kind of dissecting a Monet-Waterloo painting right?

00:19:51: And he said what color is in this painting too?

00:19:54: You can identify certain colors, and we made a grid.

00:19:58: And what people found really amazing was this kind of orchestration all like this uniformality so that there was this idea that it wasn't collective.

00:20:10: but Of course It wasn't a collective because There were thousands of People That just had nothing to do with one another.

00:20:15: in fact they some hated each other Because you know?

00:20:25: Obviously, then he became a conflict.

00:20:28: But it was all under the same color.

00:20:30: but just this landscape or escape that happened through this very simple but rigorous program of supplying colors almost like in a performative way.

00:20:56: In nineteen twelve, Monet was diagnosed with severe nuclear cataracts which progressively tinted his vision yellow and dulled this perception of color.

00:21:11: in nineteen twenty-five he could see colors again that he had lost for more than a decade.

00:21:15: these medical shifts on his vision caused final paintings become flooded with hyper saturated blue and violet tones.

00:21:23: the temporary blindness that Monet suffered is something that Mario has extrapolated.

00:21:27: Mario takes this notion, calling it social cataracts as a metaphor for society's social blindnesses.

00:21:33: The layers in his abstract paintings are expressions of the idea.

00:21:38: Take Serge Social Cataracts A new large-scale triptych on view at the Barberini.

00:21:44: It almost seems like the rippling surface water and references Monet But its much more complex than that.

00:21:50: The title references both Monet's visual disability, but also the idea of a surge as an uncontrollable and sudden increase in force or power.

00:21:58: This has both political and environmental undertones.

00:22:03: That to me was interesting thing In relation.

00:22:07: how can I build that metaphor around this condition?

00:22:14: To speak off complicated world now whereby I'm like infiltrating myself.

00:22:21: When you manage to get somewhere where you don't belong, because of course the issue is that when your antagonistic or when you're protesting and you're throwing stones they'll shut their door immediately because they can see you coming.

00:22:38: but when you enter then you begin to take apart this system from inside.

00:22:44: it's a different thing.

00:22:46: It could be more effective.

00:22:50: Monet allows for that.

00:22:51: Monet is somebody who has allowed the idea of blindness, you know?

00:22:57: The idea not wanting to see or being able to see... So Monet's just a vessel for like a broader conversation.

00:23:11: Mario painting process involves standing over-the-work.

00:23:14: he doesn't paint on easels.

00:23:16: In that sense his entire body is involved in the process and the abstractions that come with it are kind of typography with Mario floating above, getting an aerial view.

00:23:26: He works through the transfer technique.

00:23:28: that means he cannot always see exactly how the paint lands — it's a sort of blind carbon copy!

00:23:34: Something I think is so resonant in his work... ...is this idea of surrender.

00:23:39: So often we humans try to have dominion over things Be at the natural world one another but also creative ideas and our processes with them.

00:23:48: In Mario's work i see something very refreshing By creating limitations…he somehow finds freedom.

00:23:54: I think the word copy is complicated because it's not a singular.

00:23:59: Like, It Is A Transfer But Its Not A Copy.

00:24:02: Each Time The Movement Of The Body Every Time The Markets Different with a somewhat pointed end, it can't be too pointy because he rips the canvas.

00:24:30: I would just very physically download a lot of force and then movement so that pressure achieved will leave a mark on the inside.

00:24:44: On one hand you have the positive mark which is their new print in blue red or black.

00:24:52: And then, you know sometimes I would almost like in a printing process.

00:24:57: I'll do red first and then blue... ...and the black.

00:25:02: You have this doodle that was in different colors but they were done separately.

00:25:10: Then as you continue these processes of course the paint begins to dry.. ..but also it starts running out.

00:25:17: so then the positive mark becomes fainted in the process of doing so.

00:25:24: And that's how I got rid off this anxiety, making a work and there are kind of allusions to automatism because as you rightly said i'm not really looking at the process or like...I can't see their result.

00:25:42: This is something that still do fundamental for my artistic painting process.

00:25:53: that felt satisfying to me, but also in the struggle of being a young artist.

00:26:01: That you could sustain it and make it sustainable because as things are almost impossible now for younger artists making ends meet in major cities around the world.

00:26:17: so I was really concerned too.

00:26:20: how can i have practice?

00:26:22: I don't have to think too much about money.

00:26:24: I wanted him build all these kind of preoccupations from the beginning, that was

00:26:28: important.".

00:26:30: When i spoke to him we talked about how he uses red black and blue in his drawings working only with ballpoint pens.

00:26:36: Those three colors is still very dominant And you go around getting ready for a show In october.

00:26:44: Yeah those colors are dominated.

00:26:47: They dominate the palette.

00:26:49: that kind of thinking about communication, right?

00:26:55: Like communication.

00:26:57: I think the idea is like if everything was to fall apart and collapse... And

00:27:23: it's a performance by Lamine Fofana who took place around collective osmosis excerpts which we are listening too.

00:27:30: Blue's redux traces diasporic sounds in music.

00:27:34: Pofana has got this layering that creates an immense kind of weight, a density of ideas and references... ...that reminds me of Mario's canvases.

00:27:42: Polfana told me he was thinking about Monet's desire to paint around objects….

00:27:46: …to paint the air around them—and light around them!

00:27:49: And what it could mean for music?

00:27:52: There are familiar sounds.

00:27:53: you'll probably hear on tonalities but they're made strange.

00:27:56: Fofana, who's based in New York creates musical landscapes that are textured and various.

00:28:01: And they feel like there have many worlds and temporalities.

00:28:05: One can hear expressions of movement migration an alienation even in bird calls.

00:28:09: That is somehow more than earthly.

00:28:11: There's a sense of overlapping history and networking.

00:28:15: if time and space.

00:28:17: Maybe you could call it a sonic osmosis?

00:28:19: The sensive equilibrium to the tracks A coordination carefully managed by fufana that washes the sounds together, but never totally merges them.

00:28:28: Never lets them

00:28:29: blend.".

00:28:31: Laman Fofana's performance called Blue's Redux in part a meditation on blue brings us to thinking about the color itself something we've been orbiting around so far The elusive and strange nature of the hue which captured Monet and which captures Mario And many other artists across time.

00:28:49: Art historian Evie Hatch speaks about how ancient Greeks did not separate blue and black into distinct color categories.

00:28:56: They grouped them under the same word, describing a glossy dark-blue color that merges in to Black—and that's not the only ancient language.

00:29:03: it lacked of distinct words for Blue!

00:29:07: There is one particular work on view by Murillo at Desmond called Telegram which can perhaps serve as an interesting entry point to think more deeply about this color.

00:29:14: Here is Anna Schneider reading off a poem that Murillo included.

00:29:18: Maybe some of you have already encountered his painting Telegram, here up on the first

00:29:25: floor.

00:29:26: Here he quotes Marguerite Duras' The Lover On The Frame and I quote beyond all depth, covering the bounds of the world.

00:29:55: The sky for me

00:29:57: was a

00:29:57: stretch of poor brilliance crossing the blue that cold coalescence beyond all color—the light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency and torrents of silence and

00:30:14: immobility.".

00:30:21: This poem brings together the ideas of cataracts and the enigma

00:30:46: That is echoed, or rather that echoes Eve Klein's very famous quote about blue.

00:30:57: In the mid-twentieth century he said that blue has no dimensions.

00:31:00: it is beyond dimensions whereas other colours are not.

00:31:04: So here its this idea that blue was in a realm of spiritual and I think we're all familiar with which is something other About the colour blue Something beyond nature And something beyond material world.

00:31:21: I find a really kind of delightful tension in that.

00:31:25: In my own work, which is focused around the materiality of pigments... ...I think with blue there's a tension between the material and the immaterial.

00:31:35: And i think that idea of geography & human limits.. ..and aspiration to overcome those limits are key for the stories of blue.

00:31:45: Blue sits at an interesting space between the materials the immaterial between heaven and earth.

00:31:53: And there's stories that are very kind of mobile histories, they contain elements I suppose of osmosis about how materials move from one place to another.

00:32:01: technologies are adopted and transformed and associations can accumulate in shift... ...and a blue that begins as physical substance can become a symbol memory an atmosphere or spiritual idea.

00:32:16: what i think really interests me is these Movements are never one way.

00:32:21: Matter becomes meaning and meaning become matter, the material and immaterial constantly bleed into each

00:32:29: other.".

00:32:30: It's no wonder really that this enigmatic color captivated Impressionists so much especially as blue pigments became more readily available And just as Monet's lilies unexpectedly carry world within them As I mentioned before these Blue Pigments tell stories of circulation and time

00:32:49: was actually quite modern in his time.

00:32:53: It's a cobalt-aluminate pigment, so it is a compound that contains cobalte and aluminium While it relatively knew when he used it.

00:33:03: Cobalt itself has been used as colourant for thousands of years.

00:33:09: In nineteen eighty

00:33:11: two A sponge diver off the coast of Turkey discovered the remains of a late Bronze Age merchant ship that sank in around one thousand three hundred BCE and among its cargo were a hundred thirty eight ingots so I suppose kind of pellets, of cobalt blue glass.

00:33:30: Analysis suggests that these blue ingots were manufactured in Egypt before being loaded onto a ship travelling through the Eastern Mediterranean trade networks, probably towards the Aegean Sea.

00:33:42: And if they had made it to their destination... ...they would have been melted and worked into finished glass objects.

00:33:51: But I think what's even more exciting is not just how we can trace materials geographically but also across time.

00:33:58: So here we're jumping forward, maybe around two thousand years.

00:34:02: When Abbot Suje talked about the stained glass windows that he was incorporating into his scheme.

00:34:08: He talks something called materia sapphiorum and what he's doing there is evoking The blue gemstones of the heavenly Jerusalem.

00:34:17: so this blue stained glass which you see across different examples of medieval stained glass Is a material capable elevating the mind towards heaven.

00:34:28: Researchers have suggested that certain medieval blue glasses, or cobalt-blue glasses may had been made at least in part from recycled Roman or Byzantine cobalte-blue tesserae.

00:34:42: So here we have a history you know of piece of blue glass That might move form an Egyptian workshop to a ship's cargo hold become parts of a roman mosaic and then be broken up centuries later melted down in a medieval glass house and finally end up filtering light inside a Gothic cathedral.

00:35:02: So there is this circulation of blue, of recycled cobalt-blue —a movement across time and space—another.

00:35:10: five hundred or so years later Claude Monet would use modern cobalte-blue which was chemically related to these ancient blue glasses... ...in his

00:35:18: paintings.".

00:35:24: Cobalt is present at a lot of Mario's work As is ultramarine, a color that was hugely popular among the impressionists in Monet.

00:35:32: A Desminsk?

00:35:32: That monumental outside painting has a logic that includes blue On its chart.

00:35:38: there's Cobalt Blue, Ultramarines Blue and other blues on rotation cycled throughout a tight schedule.

00:35:44: It's similar approach that Mario took with Flooded Garden of Tate.

00:35:48: Some moments are for pink And orange days but blue dominates.

00:35:52: And you can see this balance in Mario's work, Surge Social Cataracts which is dominated with blue.

00:35:58: Remember that works are made on the studio floor with that aerial view and yet in Surge there's an intense feeling of being close to a surface or something.

00:36:06: perhaps it's because density of blue oil sticks.

00:36:08: mario uses...the intensity of color.

00:36:12: Since twenty thirteen Mario has been creating frequencies Canvases attached to school desks worldwide.

00:36:20: Students between the ages of ten and sixteen are invited to draw, write and doodle on them.

00:36:25: And they're collected over several months from Ghana, Lebanon, Singapore.

00:36:29: Effectively it becomes a massive encyclopedia Of The Global Human Experience.

00:36:34: Perhaps this is way To beat back at social cataracts At conditions in a world that frankly cannot see clearly The accumulated marks of thousands of young people Still insisting On being visible When these frequencies Are installed.

00:36:48: There are clear differences between the places.

00:36:50: there's dust and patinas from different parts of the world, different pens in forms of expression from places that may be stricter or more rule-bound but they're a lot of overlaps.

00:37:01: truly universal doodles and messages.

00:37:04: They also problematic things But Rurio insists to need them as an honest unfiltered expression

00:37:13: And I thought it was a genus of an idea, you know.

00:37:26: As simple as that in just record what the kids are kind of transmitting transcribing from their subconscious onto canvas and the title frequencies was in itself very enigmatic.

00:37:52: It's like, yeah this is it!

00:37:55: He is capturing these frequencies.

00:38:00: so if you were going to find something from one's cliched understanding of a certain geography One would definitely not find it.

00:38:14: but what is interesting?

00:38:16: There are certain patterns that repeat themselves in those different places because kids are just kids, no matter where they are.

00:38:26: And it is not universal—it's pluriversal.

00:38:31: So there things might be specific to certain geographies of a script writing system.

00:38:44: A drawing is a drawing.

00:38:49: A square in India, it's the square in Brazil.

00:38:52: so there might be nuances... There might be slight tints or accents to what is put on paper but they're commonalities.

00:39:06: So you wouldn't find okay because this isn't Kenya then he would have been like that.

00:39:14: No!

00:39:14: That's the brilliance of work.

00:39:16: right, it's like tuning a radio and you drop in certain place.

00:39:25: And yet the same story or similar story because our concerns as humans are basically very similar.

00:39:38: Mario series disrupted frequencies renegotiates time and space between these countries by stitching individual canvases from his Frequencies Series together.

00:39:48: That means that canvases from Colombia, Japan the UK or Egypt may be joined.

00:39:54: And on these new larger stitched-together canvasses Mario paints as abstractions—that dominant palette of blues and blacks.

00:40:02: Ndikong has described it a process of mapping but also crucially as an negation to map.

00:40:08: Here's an excerpt reading poem titled Maps by Indigenous Canadian poet Lee Maracle.

00:40:14: Ndikong chose to read this poem in connection with Mario's work during a conversation the two had at Das Minsk.

00:40:29: Maps are critical revisits with visions, vistas and never before seen repeats.

00:41:00: Maps direct intentions call attention And direct us to previous being.

00:41:11: maps scatter reflection leading us to delude our well-being.

00:41:19: maps Flatten surfaces, pictograph time...

00:41:28: But again we find the central tension in Mario's work.

00:41:31: Mark making as a communication that resists conclusion, resists becoming didactic.

00:41:36: Try to gather everything that moves through frequencies into something smooth and conclusive And you'll fail.

00:41:41: In that refusal to settle We find something much closer To human experience than certain takeaways could ever offer.

00:41:47: It is true sense of complexity.

00:41:50: Letting things bleed though whether it's pigment, geography or generations as part of Mario's wager.

00:41:56: Making institutions porous is another way of letting light in and letting that light-in is a way to push back against social blindness—whether that's via collective acts of making or creating space for other ways of seeing —or whether its by bringing tightens of art history into conversation with different time logic... ...or another world than which they normally belong… And blue carries a similar charge.

00:42:21: It's everywhere above our heads, the world over shared and seemingly endless in perpetual.

00:42:27: And yet it is elusive in nature—the object of so much poetry tragedy and melancholia.

00:42:33: Blue's definitive form eludes us too just the moment we try to hold

00:42:36: it.".

00:42:51: At the core of it lied, you know almost like a refuge but also was kind therapy.

00:43:06: I mean and this is not...I'm being sensationalist But art saved my life because where i come from In Colombia could have quite easily been dead already by violence that young people groomed in.

00:43:28: I mean, quite literally art was this kind of saviour.

00:43:31: It's this universe that is infinite.

00:43:35: Quite literally like a Buddha.

00:43:36: well and in this very profound time of crisis... ...I think how art as it means everybody can be part of the very simple way.

00:44:09: This podcast was recorded on the occasion of The Symposium Blue, a conversation on collective osmosis as part of the exhibition Oscar Merillo Collective Osmosis which ran from March through August twenty-twenty six at Das Men's Kunsthaus in Potsdam including works by Claude Monet From the Hasso Platinum Collection.

00:44:27: The exhibition curators were Anna Schneider and Daniel Mills.

00:44:30: this podcast was written edited and hosted by me Kate Brown.

00:44:34: It Was Produced By ACB Stories Podcasts, guests and excerpts were heard from Oscar Murillo Bonaventura-Saube Jean Dickung Anna Schneider and Evie Hatch.

00:44:44: The music was provided by Laman Fofana.