I like the number three. Three has something magical, something sacred, something spiritual. In dialectical discourse there is a kind of confrontation in the conversation where an interesting dynamic occurs: two opposing arguments are intertwined in a debate based on pure logic and reasoning and reach an instance of overcoming these differences. And if we are going to get technical, we talk about the exposition of a thesis, the presentation of contradictions in an antithesis and finally that third moment of synthesis where the problem in question is understood. I like the number three because it is, in this framework, a conciliatory number.
When Friedrich Nietzsche wrote The Birth of Tragedy (1872) studying the origin of Greek tragedy, he based his study on two principles: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo is the god who represents the supremacy of reason, harmony, beauty and balance and Dionysus, for his part, represents unbridled passions, earthly sensuality, overflow. And it is this “duplicity of the Apollonian and the Dionysian” – paraphrasing the philosopher -, contrasting and complementary, typical of life itself, the essential key in the field of art and creative development.

My introduction is not capricious. The works that Mariana Brea displays in the exhibition Dialectic between the Apollonian and the Dionysian do nothing more than materialize philosophical concepts of a great thinker that are still valid. In the room, works are displayed that highlight this synthesis process proposed by dialectic because from pieces originally governed by constructive patterns of an obsessive rationality, rigorous workmanship on the verge of exasperation, specular interrelation of the parts and the uniform palette that seems contemplating even the precision of the brightness as controlled flashes, the artist is encouraged to violate the structure, break the specularity, nuance and combine the colors, producing a new story that is related to the previous one but is clearly no longer the same. From there to the total break, a sigh: Mariana takes the plot into space, exceeds the support of paper, highlights the unions, points out the process and dares, in some pieces, to give prominence to chaos.
Starting with the Organicidad Metálica series, started in 2019, Mariana Brea challenges her compositional impulses that guide her along controllable, balanced, sophisticated, elegant paths and allows herself to delve into the vagaries of the unknown although taking care not to get lost in the excessive intoxication of her Inner Dionysus, ensuring that his Apollo does not feel forgotten. Works are then presented that, at first glance, are of a perfect symmetrical order, coexisting with others that have the freshness of a curly mane receiving the caress of the wind. All of them dancing a dialectical, overcoming dance, where one debates with another and where one plus one is never two but rather a third moment is formed. And that is, in this instance, the work of Mariana Brea, a number three.
I like the number three.

Lic. María Carolina Baulo, March 2022