Catalog: The Ballast, by Anja Marais

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THE BALLAST by

Anja Marais

OCT 17 - DEC 12 2014

FIREHOUSE GALLERY BATON ROUGE ART COUNCIL 427 LAUREL AVE BATON ROUGE, LA, 70806

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s part of Prospect 3 + BR, the Arts Council’s Firehouse Gallery has invited Miami-based South African artist Anja Marais to Baton Rouge. Anja Marais will take over the Firehouse Gallery with a hand-made environment of video, sculpture, and installation works that continue her explorations of water, earth, and human interactions. The Ballast, assembled especially for the Baton Rouge community and P3+BR, focuses on how we experience change, stagnation, and natural forces. From one work to another, Marais’s art builds an intricate, many-layered visual poem — haunting and ethereal and rich in supernatural metaphor. Her installation at the Arts Council’s Firehouse Gallery continues this and instills a feeling of contemplation and longing in the viewer — with a strong sense of the supernatural.

The works in The Ballast include moving images, sculpture, works on paper and mixed media oil paintings on panel. The artist’s video narratives are centered around a sepia stop-motion animation, created and filmed in St. Petersburg Russia. They follow a mysterious female figure that recurs in much of Marais’ imagery, and stand for the often metaphysical relationship we have with the environment and a desire to become one with the natural non-human world.

Featured on one gallery wall is an installation of found antique oval frames, encasing broken down fragments of textured water. This centerpiece evokes our own community’s familiar vistas and complex relationship with the Mississippi River.

Water is a powerful subject and a pervasive theme in Anja’s work. There is mystery in it, and life. There are hints of hidden human forms, and a mysticla relationship to the earth that Anja turns into a visual language. The water is like a metaphysical chant that reflects and connects everything.”

Considering herself a storyteller, Anja Marais also wants to reveal the magic in our midst.

As the viewer moves through the installation at the Firehouse Gallery, the boundaries of the dream world and reality try to dissolve. With the interplay of moving image, painted surfaces, and sculptural object, The Ballast will cast us as beings in her own supernatural, metaphysical place.

The public is invited to the opening reception for The Ballast at the Arts Council’s Firehouse Gallery, and an opportunity to meet the artist, on Friday 17 October from 5:30pm to 8pm. The exhibition will remain on view through 12 December as part of the Baton Rouge programming and partnership with Prospect 3 New Orleans .

Eric Holowacz President of Greater Baton Rouge Arts Council

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hen working on the visuals for my project THE BALLAST I was thinking of the peculiarities of the weight of art. The artist carries a unique burden in which he has to work within the world and at the same time has to seek entry points into new worlds. It reminds me of the scripture that advises one to, “be in the world but not of this world.” The artist desperately seeks to carry out the seemingly impossible task of relating simultaneously to his object and subject, and yet being neither subject nor object. It is akin to looking into a mirror and seeing yourself as the object, and as you are thinking of yourself immediately you become the subject (and vice-versa): “now you see me, now you don’t”. It is within this paradox of rigidity and fluidity that I question our place of balance. In THE BALLAST I have taken the point of view not of the experience of a solidified state or a state of fluidity, but of being a witness to the struggle and the feat of being in flux between the two.

Despite the apparent impermeability of a rock and its ability to brace itself against the elements, it slowly and imperceptibly erodes. A rock also presents functionality and stability. If I pile enough rocks in the belly of a seagoing vessel, it will stay below the water level, a compensator for buoyancy. On another plane, a rock brings forth life, if one accepts that our planet is a functional, yet slowly eroding rock. We cannot separate ourselves from the environment we exist in, and on. But as we cling to this rock of ages we are also floating in space, just as the rocks in the hull of an oceangoing vessel – we have learned to float through time and the universe. As any survivalist knows, with nothing to cling to in a rapidly moving body of water, we need to give ourselves over to the stream to stay buoyant and prevent drowning – exactly the situation of faith. But this weight that brings us movement can also bring forth stagnation (or worse) if the load keeps accumulating and the liberty of continuance is stripped away. What is the path of liberation when the ballast is pulling you under the water level? The Buddhists believe that achieving liberation is twofold, by letting go and letting go into something. Letting go into something, perhaps, has less to do with willing or creating than it does with allowing. For example, leaving home at a young age is akin to surrendering to a rapidly moving body of water, to allow yourself new, future possibilities – letting go, into something.

Allowing myself as an artist to have faith and giving over to my subconscious I can let go of the right amount of weight to keep myself relevant and sturdy in the given moment. To keep this ambiguous balance, I believe one has to, “keep standing in the middle of all this”, to be tucked and pulled without stopping observing what is tucking and pulling you.

THE BALLAST is built from these intermingling dualities of real experiences and it touches upon the domestic as well as the epic. How when we are in flux, our observations of the world are renewed from any new point as it can be regarded as the center, and where all positions are relative. A transcendental trickery where we can paradoxically deconstruct boundaries and unify all divisions. Thomas Tranströmer spoke of the effect of art on the artist and viewer as, ”a house of glass standing on a slope; rocks are flying, rocks are rolling. The rocks roll straight through the house but every pane of glass is still whole.”

Anja Marais

The Transition, 2014, Plaster of Paris and found objects

DETAIL: The Transition, 2014, Plaster of Paris and found objects

Installation View

“ The Baltic Sea: Series”,

2014,

Mixed Media

“ The Baltic Sea: Part II”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

48” x 66”

“ The Baltic Sea: Part III”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

48” x 66”

Installation View

Installation View

The Storm in the night, 2014, Mixed Media and Found Objects

The Storm in the night, 2014, Mixed Media and Found Objects

The Storm in the night, 2014, Mixed Media and Found Objects

In s t a l l a t i o n V i e w

“ L a b o r o f B u r d e n ”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

48” x 48”

“ T h r o u g h t h e v e i l ”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

48” x 48”

“The Flood Gates”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

32” x 40”

“The Flood Gates”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

32” x 40”

“Dostoevsky’s rocks”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

32” x 40”

“Grounding”,

2014,

Found Objects,

Dimensions Variable

“Grounding”,

2014,

Found Objects,

Dimensions Variable

“Transparency of rocks”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

70” x 82”

“Lightness of being”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

70” x 82”

“I look at the sky; the sky looked at me”,

2014,

Mixed Media,

49” x 41”

“The eye of the storm”, 2014, Mixed Media and found objects

“The eye of the storm”, DETAIL, 2014, Mixed Media and found objects

Installation View

“Catherdral, Still i’”, 2014, Archival digital print, Ltd 15, 16 x 24

“Catherdral, Still ii’”, 2014, Archival digital print, Ltd 15, 16 x 24

“Catherdral, Still ii’”, 2014, Archival digital print, Ltd 15, 16 x 24

Installation View

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