Two great themes run through Maria Miu’s creation, dual in concept and realization, one of art that descends towards its primary forms (like art made by children or naive), towards sign and symbol, which bears the stamp of innocence and thirst for knowledge and one revealing sensuality, an eroticism transposed like a narrative, sequential, without an explicit play of forces, with an aesthetic-conceptual stake.
Through the first types of compositions, the artist creates images with different levels of significance, or rather, moments of depth that build steps for the viewer to understand them. The plastic gesture is required beyond the beneficial variety of modes of expression. The gap between the lived experience and the experience of the artistic act is conquered under the pressure of a unifying artistic vision. Formulating a narrative of time, of essence, the naive works bring with them a sense of communication and fulfillment, offering the sensation of a stopped moment, either as the wedding ritual or a vegetal motif. A wave of poetry spreads on the world of favorite subjects, each variant of her works leaning on the others – a cycle of images with subtle chromatic variations. What is surprising is the way the works are elaborated, as spectators we witness a real exercise of spontaneity.
In the latest series we witness the juxtaposition of iconic images, reminiscent of both surreal elements, but especially of possible images that run cinematically, or like an illustrated book, through which the artist introduces an almost ubiquitous visual element in each of the works, monumentality and sumptuousness (which seems to emerge from the tradition of frescoes or tapestry).
There is a degree of theatricality in Maria Miu’s paintings, which are in an active search for communication from the inside to the outside. The artist approaches each canvas as a theater stage, where she gradually places her characters and traces their destiny. Through the rich ornamentation, which often frames the work like a frame, through the colorful vortices, with three-dimensional effect that serve as background while printing a centrifugal movement, in different directions from one to another, the artist articulates her own expressiveness that juxtaposes emotion, intuition , memory to amplify the action. Conceived and framed in supports of such playing cards, the artist’s characters are active and passive at the same time, depending on which part of the work you are looking at, engaged in a sexual sarabande, in a game of seducer and seduced. Without resorting to nudity, the artist introduces elements of the eroticized iconography of the woman, in the form of garters, high heels, this being in turn what Freud called “dominatrix” or phallic woman, (in contrast to the man who is objectified and naked) but the part dominated (submissive). Starting from the postmodern erotic iconography, the artist juggles the typology of the woman, structuring a prototype with her own personality and desire, which freely negotiates her sexuality.
What is certain is that the painting for Maria Miu is a form of unleashing, regardless of the form it takes, an equally evocative painting, imbued with a force of deep feeling that makes each viewer carry their thoughts in an extension of the unseen but also of courage, of overcoming stereotypes.
With the vocation and preparation of a plurivalent spirit and not least with the sensitivity of a poet, in love with forms and harmonies as she cultivates contrast, through his painting, MariaMiu marks the effort of language autonomy, experiencing all art forms involving the release of tensions (no only from the Freudian point of view), in order to dispel the canons about what is an artist, especially, in order to paint a path in which, what matters is the sincerity and intense experience of the subject.