Hail to the queen

Abstract artist pays homage to Mayan inspiration.

Ricardo Mazal: La Tumba de la Reina Roja from Reality to Abstraction, showcases the work of Mexican-born abstract painter Ricardo Mazal. The artist celebrates the culture and spirituality of the pre-Columbian past in this latest feat, on exhibit at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. The show is an ambitious collection of photographs, monotypes and large-scale paintings inspired by an unlikely muse: a Mayan noblewoman called The Red Queen.

In 1994, archeologists stumbled upon Mexico’s greatest find in decades, the tomb of the Red Queen at the Mayan site of Palenque. Blanketed in ground cinnabar, the skeletal remains of a female were accompanied by rich offerings of jade, pearls, malachite masks, obsidian and shell — markers of her elevated social status.

When Mazal viewed a photograph of the Queen, he was immediately drawn to the woman shrouded in mystery. In 2003 he traveled to Palenque, documenting his journey through hundreds of digital images of the landscape, temples and stones.

Photography proved to be the link between reality and abstraction. Tree branches, vines, and stone surfaces were downloaded and digitally manipulated. The artist experimented until the desire effect was achieved: a virtual painting with the now blurred, cropped and repositioned images. Mazal then transferred this composition onto a canvas. The resulting work, imbued in the abstract, pays homage to the Red Queen through skillfully blended pairings of texture and color, space and scale.

Heavy applications of paint form multilayered, textured, color-saturated surfaces in Mazal’s paintings of the tomb. Visible beneath rich swaths of red lie black and green paint mimicking the hues of the fragmented pieces of jade and malachite found alongside the Queen. It is this constant reference to the pre-Columbian past which highlights the interconnectedness between Mazal’s personal and cultural identity.

At the center of the exhibition, located in the middle of the gallery floor, Mazal has recreated the tomb in a nonfigurative evocation. Black and red rectangular fields of color, the exact dimensions of the burial chamber and sarcophagus, aid in the metaphorical allusion to this private and sacred space. Red figures prominently throughout the exhibition and is a tie to Mazal’s Mexican heritage.

"Red to me is passion, says Mazal. "It links to the Maya and how they used red. Red was the color of blood, and for them, life."

The spirit and magic of the Red Queen, La Reina Roja, lives on in Mazal’s work.

Ricardo Mazal: La Tumba de la Reina Roja from Reality to Abstraction,

through Sept. 24 at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 7374 E. Second Street, Scottsdale. For viewing hours and admission, visit www.smoca.org or call (480) 874-4630