Mariella Agois (1956-2024), the infinite line [IN MEMÓRIAM]

His were lines that projected in provocative or paradoxical directions. Planes that hinted at volumes without being volumes. Shades of colors that sank into false depths. Patterns, edges and crevices that deceived the eye. In her dislocated geometry, Mariella Agois (1956-2024) displayed a beauty as abstract as it was sensual.

“They are images that have no reference in reality, but that remind us all the time how the brain processes what the eyes see”, says curator Jorge Villacorta, who worked together with architect Paulo Dam on the exhibition “Geometric systems. Paintings 2008-2023″, a fundamental exhibition that just a few days ago opened at the Lima Art Museum (MALI).

Last Sunday, in the El Dominical supplement of this newspaper, we reported on this exhibition, in which Agois had actively participated during its preparation. And on the same day, in the early hours of the morning, Agois died as a result of a complex illness. She was 67 years old.

NEW WAYS

Born in Lima, Agois trained as a photographer in the mid-70s, when she stood out as a student of the teacher Fernando La Rosa. But in the following decade she moved to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she would expand her training and she would turn mainly toward painting. She would eventually decide to return to our country to explore new and diverse interests. “In Chicago she was confronted with an entire panorama that was being revised, something that was called the postmodern moment. And in that sense, I always found his decision to return to Peru exemplary.”says Villacorta.

Indeed, throughout decades of consistent work, Agois surpassed the limits and conventions of various trends or influences, and rather was nourished by all of them: from pre-Columbian textiles to Op-art, from pictorial minimalism to certain references of viceregal and republican painting. “What she wanted was to put all this in dialogue,” says Villacorta. The references that she used were of all kinds, but they are never quotes, but rather elements that she borrows.

For the curator, Agois Banchero is a crucial figure in the panorama of contemporary Peruvian art. “I have met very few artists with such acute visual intelligence.”he points out, while highlighting another attribute of his work, as important as that of the references from which he drew.

“From the moment I worked on the composition of a painting, I was all the time thinking about how the eyes of those who would observe it in the exhibition room would look at it. That’s why she always looked for complicity, it’s part of her painting. “She understands that without that complicity, she is not achieving her goal,” she emphasizes.

Going through the retrospective exhibition of Agois at the MALI confirms and expands everything said: it is entering into a dynamic of playful and subversive visual perceptions; also trace obsessions and motivations of varied, but always harmonious, origins; and above all, witness the coherent evolution of an authentic and singular artist. That’s why His legacy soars along with one of those lines of his that seem infinite. She will be missed.