Participating Artist
Maria Appleton
Informations
Feb 8 → 25 2023
Paris, France
Press Release
Time flies by here, with our fast-paced conception of living. We are in Paris, the city of lights. A metaphor for the epicenter of modernity, light is a synonym for avant-garde thinking. In this city, great minds have come together to reimagine the Western world. Maria wants to know, what about now? How many of these lights still brighten Paris in present times? Is There Yet Space For Light is an introspection on the absence of light in the world, shedding light on environments that corrupt our capacity to imagine and to perceive. It is indeed a rhetorical question, hence there is no question mark at the end. The digital world, over consumption, relentless construction, and all sorts of other deteriorating realities that occupy our space. Is There Yet Space For Light is as mental as it is incredibly physical exercise.
Colours and shapes and colours and shapes and more COLOURS AND SHAPES are Maria’s premises to transmute these thoughts into bodily sensations. A simple process of the mathematical formula called intuition: a sensibility of the artistic practice that produces its own instructions, visual orders and optical rules. The red is placed next to the yellow and these two colours merge perfectly into orange, as if they were the product of scientific phenomena. These works are the result of a time of reflection and observation, but mostly of chromatic experimentation. Colour only exists because of the presence of light, so, do you see these colours? Search for it! Look through its transparencies, do you see these colours? Boom, light! You are in the presence of light! Is There Yet Space For Light allows these ethereal elements to lead the way to a new renaissance of thinking through simple pockets of clarity.
Courtesy Francisca Portugal
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Maria Appleton (b. 1997) is a Lisbon-based artist whose practice interrogates the subjectivity of urban systems and human perception.
Her work has been presented internationally through exhibitions and residencies, including Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan (2018); EMMA Institute, Germany (2020); Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2022, funded by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation); Fondation CAB, Brussels (2024); and the Albers Foundation residency program (2026). Solo exhibitions include Gaze to See, Gauze to Perceive at FOCO Gallery, Lisbon (2021), HATCH, Paris (2023), and What Holds the Structure at Galeria Foco, Lisbon (2026).

Installation views, Is There Yet Space For Light, Hatch Gallery, Paris, France, 2023. © Adrien Thibault. Courtesy of the Artist and Hatch Gallery.

Installation views, Is There Yet Space For Light, Hatch Gallery, Paris, France, 2023. © Adrien Thibault. Courtesy of the Artist and Hatch Gallery.

Maria Appleton
Tower With No Inside II
2023
From series 'Light Sculptor'
Woven paper and photograph, fabric dyed and sewn, welded metal frame.
40 x 45 x 10 cm

Maria Appleton
Tower With No Inside II
2023
Details

Installation views, Is There Yet Space For Light, Hatch Gallery, Paris, France, 2023. © Adrien Thibault. Courtesy of the Artist and Hatch Gallery.

Maria Appleton
6 am
2023
From series 'Tapume'
Woven and dyed cotton and wool threads, dyed an printed silk, welded metal
200 x 100 cm

Maria Appleton
Action Reaction Object
2023
From series 'Glimpse on a Box'
Printed and dyed silk and cotton, welded metal
105 x 72 x 11 cm

Maria Appleton
Action Reaction Object
2023

Maria Appleton
misleading informative Wall
2022
From series 'Cave Paintings'
Dyed cotton and silk, cotton and polyester fabric cut and woven, metal roads
201 x 90 cm

Installation views, Is There Yet Space For Light, 2023 (details).

Maria Appleton
misleading informative Wall
2022
Details

Installation views, Is There Yet Space For Light (installation), 2023 (details).

Installation views, Is There Yet Space For Light (installation), 2023 (details).


