Ricardo Mazal at El Museo de Arte de Queretaro

Ricardo Mazal continues to move and amaze with the second installment of his trilogy on the sacredness of life. Seemingly to the contrary, he approaches his theme through the various human practices surrounding death and burial. His first installment was a meditation on the Tomb of the Red Queen, the burial site at Palenque from 600 AD of a Mayan princess. The sarcophagus was covered in a brilliant red pigment called cinnebar and although the body of the princess itself was no longer there, the color and the experience of absence, along with the stones of the pyramid itself and the jungle beyond provided the inspiration for Mazal's phenomenal body of work. In 2007, Mazal made a journey to Michelstadt, Germany, where friends took him to one of their favorite places, the forest of Friewald, or the Peace Forest. Sited in the Odenwald area of Germany, between the Rhine, Main and Neckar rivers, this forest has become a burial site for families in a unique and ecologically thoughtful way. Each tree can be leased for 99 years; as members of the family die they are cremated, placed in biodegradable urns and buried near the roots of their tree. This return of life to the living earth provided the impetus for the next series in the trilogy, Odenwald 1152. 1152 refers to his own tree, which the mayor of the region insisted Mazal lease even though Mazal explained that as a Mexican and a Jew he would not actually be buried there. Nonetheless, the mayor wanted to be part of the project by securing a tree for the family and when Mazal found the ancient tree whose 4' trunk divided into four parts, symbolizing for him himself, his wife and their two daughters, it provided the emotional and conceptual anchor for the work. Mazal first produces a number of photographs which stand alone as important works of art, but which he then manipulates on the computer to create images that will become paintings. Anne Reed Gallery was honored to present a number of the photographs in an exhibition last year, and now the monumental paintings can be seen at El Museo de Arte de Queretaro in Mexico City. This extraordinary trilogy will be completed with the images resulting from this summer's trip to Mount Kailish in Tibet where the "Sky Burials", bodies placed on elevated platforms without sold enclosures, acknowledge the departure of the significant portion of a human being upon death and the recyling of the remaining organic material, the body, back to the earth either through nourishing the birds and animals who eat it or through natural decomposition. This powerful body of work will be one of the most significant events in contemporary art in the decade and we encourage you to follow Mazal's progress as we certainly will.

You can see a wonderful interview with Ricardo Mazal where this and much more is explained at: http://artworksmagazine.com/2009/03/ricardo-mazal/ The only caveat is that while Ricardo describes his photographing of the jungle at Palenque the images shown are those of Odenwald. Still, it gives great insight into his process and also into the humanity of this amazing artist.



Marzo 7.05 from Tomb of the Red Queen.