2023. 6. 29 – 9. 1
The Calm Before the Storm

Mira Makai is an artist who plays, who creates her pieces intuitively, without defining the final result from the outset. This fact endows her figures with an almost magical quality, turning them into small inanimate beings that, paradoxically, seem about to perform some action when one observes them. These ceramic characters make up Makai’s artistic universe, in which she has found her own language inspired by mythology and rituality, creating pieces with extravagant shapes and bright colors.

Makai exhibits again at L21 with the solo show “The Calm before the Storm”, presenting a set of artworks that can be interpreted separately or as part of a thematic installation that the artist refers to as “Sacrifice for the Wisest”. The sculptures trigger sensations that can be contradictory. They are pleasant but also disturbing, as well as changing, since they evoke different emotions depending on the angle from where we observe them.

The scene is part of a fictional story, without beginning or end, in which Makai invites us to ask questions that may help us to find an end to this story. The artist’s imagination and own experiences meet those of the viewer to shape a story that can be told in different voices. In this open story, the leader (the piece titled “Witch Doctor”), stands in the middle of the pedestal, while the other characters surround and worship him or her. From the titles of the exhibition and this installation, we can deduce that something is about to happen. Something dramatic maybe? Something transformative, or even transcendental? All scenarios are open.

(excerpts from Cristina Molina text)

Mira Makai (b.1990, Budapest, Hungary) is an artist based in Budapest. Makai works across ceramic, acrylic painting, and oil pastel drawings. Moving away from the world of organic abstraction that previously characterized her works, she found a new home in a world of hybrid-like, magnified comic book miniatures intertwining of mythological and Pop culture influences.

L21 Gallery BARCELONA
C. Salvador 24, 2º
08902 L’Hospitalet de Llobregat
Barcelona, Spain

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