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Nature, Space, and
Light
The visual art of
Margot S. Neuhaus shows a consistent focus on reflection and
a subtle dialogue with the materials. Also consistent is her
love of nature, the spiritual thread that joins the various
phases of her work. Neuhaus studied art in Brazil and
psychology at the University of Chicago. Both disciplines
have given her a solid base for the artistic expression of
thought and aesthetic.
Neuhaus
began her career in the late 1980s and early 1990s with wood
and stone sculptures exhibited in Washington at the World
Bank and the Art Museum of the Americas. These pieces show
the central themes of her vision: a concern for nature and
the minimal use of resources.
In
her series on paper (1998-2007), she experimented with the brevity
of the brushstroke and the lightness of the medium in an
introspective exercise with a minimalist and conceptual
language. In 2005, she began exploring ways to find a place
for minimalist landscape art in digital photography.
Neuhaus
has won a number of awards and exhibited her works in the
United States and Europe. Her art is now part of private
collections and in museums. She is currently living in
Washington, D.C., working on her exhibitions, and leading
art workshops for children and their family members at the
National Institutes of Health.
Her
recent exhibition, “Luminous Silence,” at the Art Museum of the Americas shows large,
semi-abstract photographs that bear witness to the presence
of light, space, and time, all moving in a delicate balance
inside the image.
Because
of her constant preoccupation with harmony, Neuhaus could be
considered a classical artist in search of Apollonian order
and reason. But in reality, she listens to the silent
structures of nature, the orderly scaffolding of ecology,
and the rhythm of natural cycles. Her Mexican origin leads
us to think of pre-hispanic cosmogonies and pantheistic
ceremonies where human beings merge with geography.
“When I
began to take photos,” the artist confesses, “I was playing
with my camera to try to capture the changing colors of the
landscape. And later from the window of an airplane, I tried
to capture the horizon, a line that was not so much a limit
as the union of two parts.”
Her,
images—whether aerial horizon shots, magnolias, or
minimalist landscapes—are diverse representations of the
same theme: nature and its infinite variations.
In the
magnolia photos, reminiscent of Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers,
beauty emerges from the simple patterns, without technical
interventions, close up, where the artist can penetrate the
intimacy of the flower and learn its secret. It is the
secret of a strange harmony that astonishes us; one that we
too often transgress upon, violate, or destroy.
In her
journey as an artist, Neuhaus has moved from noble wood
sculptures to digital camera technology, but her vision
continues to be faithful to her aesthetic, her minimalist
style, and her theme of nature with its ongoing mysteries,
the correlation between its signs and its significance.
Neuhaus’s
work is an existential reflection, in communion with the
materials and techniques and present in everything from
sculptured volume to photographic semi-abstraction.
“My
artistic expression is like my own life,” the artist says.
“It’s about leaving materials behind in search of light and
simplicity.”
The work
of Margot S. Neuhaus invites us to celebrate the hidden
mysteries of nature and its changes, the perfect harmony of
an undecipherable cosmos.
-Adriana Bianco,
2009
Member of the
Association of Art Critics (AACA)
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