BETWEEN THE LINES

In this new body of work, Ricardo Mazal revisits and reimagines visual languages developed across key moments in the his career. The newest works references a series which Mazal considers a decisive breakthrough in his career: the E-series (2000). The E-series marked Mazal’s first extensive incorporation of digital compositional processes, as well as a transition toward a smoother, more transparent application of oil paint. These works layered luminous backgrounds rendered in thin veils of oil; fragmented letters drawn from email exchanges between the artist and his wife at the beginning of their relationship; and dense gestural networks of lines inspired by charcoal drawings and photographic studies. The new works strip many of these elements away. What remains is a more minimalist interpretation of the visual language first developed in the E-series — the lines themselves becoming the protagonists. This reencounter with the E-series began through a chance discovery within the artist’s extensive digital archive, where Mazal rediscovered a folder containing experimental digital renderings made years earlier. These studies isolated the gestural line networks against monochromatic or white backgrounds — a direction that had remained unresolved at the time.