About
Magdalena Paz was born in Santiago, Chile in 1990
She currently lives and works in her studio in Berlin, Germany
Her artistic process is heavily run by her obsession with organising and reorganising that came about from a constant displacement growing-up. On the other hand, it parallels her athletic practice in the form of endurance, and spontaneity as a result of preparation. The work itself picks repetitive thoughts, unanswered questions, and curiosities that come into the artists awareness again and again and it confines them in a physical space where they can move on to provoke awareness, or questions, in others. She considers painting, like sport, to be a highly physical and mental process—often causing long uninterrupted hours of work without breaks
[...] I would like to think that [artists and atheletes] share an element of purity. They are pure in the sense that he who is an athlete and he who is an artist has a highly intrinsic motivation for practicing their discipline, and that because of this element the product of their efforts embody expression. They also have a comparable way of working towards their goals, the artist works to achieve a harmonious manipulation of medium through research and experimentation, as does the athlete aim to achieve a harmonious manipulation of his body through training. Artist and athlete require discipline and knowledge of technique, but this can only take them so far; from there, the ability to respond and improvise to situations as they appear is essential and conducive to new knowledge. This ability for improvisation and controlled spontaneity comes as a result of preparation.
- Magdalena Paz, “The Potential of Art in Enriching our Experiences and Deepening our Level of Understanding in Disciplines Other than the Arts," 2017