Reviews

The possibility of expressing the essence of something implies prescinding from the irrelevant. Cristina resorts to the primitive process of abstraction to turn matter into an endless number of inner manifestos, which are impossible to classify.

The series “Getting Lost” (2022) is conceived with the intention of recomposing the fragments of an episode of temporal amnesia suffered by the artist; however, how can the unknown be recovered? Absent from herself, and in an act of faith, she had to believe in other people’s accounts, which tried unsuccessfully to recall the discussions, places, looks and dreams of a moment that was forever encrypted in dump of rootless images.

The artist claims that her only ally in recovering some resonance is color. She remembers and orchestrates elements in stains of color. The lack of any descriptive evocation of her memories seems to give her a sort of freedom that separates her from the faithful representation of a compelling reason. Thus, papers are susceptible of becoming essays of such reconstruction, to then give way to canvas to contain the most overwhelming experience.

May 2023,
Curadora Julieta Pons

Cristina Mazzucchelli’s paintings seem to be absolutely abstract. They are, indeed, based on experiences and encounters. Her series insinuate a possible narrative but they soon hide behind layers of color and superimpositions of paintbrush marks, which become as diverse as the words of a language. A loose and expressive technique tries to represent the whole experience of being in the landscape, filling the view of the spectator with an overwhelming sensation of color, using her own hands to work with the material on the canvas as a way of emphasizing for herself the act or the process of painting.
The difference with her previous paintings is that there tended to be a lack of relationship between each of the parts and the composition; now, however, the surface is complete, uniform and soft, and presents a “holistic” field. The unified field of saturated color and the large size of the canvas make the spectator feel totally surrounded by the work. When that happens, there is a sort of dramatic and even physically effective understanding, in which the large surface of the canvas and the intense color suggest something that goes beyond the physical aspect of the painting itself. In her paintings, black is always notably present as a way of setting the pace between one image and another with the idea of establishing a possible dialogue between chaos and silence, and definite strokes express spiritual affinity with primitive and archaic art, vindicating at times the flat shapes and the plane of the painting.
We know that proving the worth of the extreme abstraction of the work represents a constant desire that helps transmit the feeling and the meaning of the painting to the spectator.
Cristina Mazzucchelli insists on this strategy as a way shaping the feelings that arise every time we face the unknowable.

Blanca Monzon
Film and Art Critic. Curator
Text Exhibition Dialogo. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2017

Cristina Mazzucchelli´s painting comes from deep within her. It is characterized by a genuine development and a path of honesty in its aesthetics. It can be placed within the wide spectrum of Abstract Expressionism.
Cristina elaborates her surfaces with strong physical intervention. She works with the action, with her body, with the adrenaline generated by their combination. She is intense and, in many instances, she resolves the composition by directly burying her hands in the material —acrylic— to apply it on the canvas without hesitation or turning back. Such a daring way of working leaves on the canvas living particles of her emotions, of her intensity, of her way of feeling the work. Black, dominant as it is presented, plays the leading role not only in the main planes but also in the graphisms, whose dialogues produce texture and tension in the composition.
The artist takes her academic education to break free from it, generating a personal dialectics that brings her own aesthetics to life. Using an austere palette, as I mentioned before, with black as the protagonist, Cristina takes the tension of her gesture to extremes. In her paintings, we can perceive a game of seduction between union and disintegration, which reveals two sides of a single reality.
Mazzucchelli´s work is spontaneous in its resolution, intense in its wealth, intuitive and authentic. In her proposal, the use of devices of the plastic arts —perspective, tension, movement, graphisms— is presented as the natural consequence of the manifestation of impulsive energies, all this resulting from the conscious freedom-based work of the artist.
Her process is adrenalinic, it is a game where vertigo and emotion, driver and fuel of her search, generate a fertile dialogue between chaos and silence.

Rebeca Mendoza
Plastic Art
Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2017

Every time I write a text about the qualities of a disciple, I am stricken by a feeling of pleasure and risk: of pleasure because I have the opportunity to write about the work of a student, result of my work as a professor, and of risk because probably I will not be able to express the necessary, appropriate and, of course, sincere words to describe their work as well as they deserve.
Cristina has the qualities of those who will undoubtedly become renowned artists. It is just a matter of time. She has the talent and perseverance required to become one. When these two characteristics come together in a person like Cristina, the only risk she is left to deal with is facing and putting up with herself. Being able to detect with no rush or urgency the moment and the opportunity to show her own work in the right place will not be an easy task, but those are the rules of the art market. This situation is not easy at all. Opportunities are sometimes difficult to find, and the spirit starts walking towards a minefield called unease it must never set foot on.
Her work, I am a faithful witness of it —everybody knows how demanding I am—, grows day after day in quality with the new proposals she adds not being afraid of taking risks. Also, she has the gift that only a few young artists use: “It does not matter how many times I fall down, what matters is how many times I get back up”.

Marco Otero
Plastic Art
Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2015