Maya Gold: To Make a Difference
Something transpires in Maya Gold’s works: a lively movement of leaves in the air, oranges, and juggling batons. A closer look reveals the cause: someone is down there, and she is responsible for the action – she sweeps, she throws, she opens umbrellas; energetic like a tiny worker bee, who is responsible for the profusion whirling in our eyes, or like a fly (as the gods deem us to be).
The result is a type of reversed aerial perspective, from a tiny spot on the ground toward the cosmos and the heavens. We, the viewers, are located at the Olympian locus, “up in the sky,” and like the angels, we can watch her doings. It is an act of nothingness, a mundane or playful act, yet one which generates an occurrence in the world – in the world of painting and art, and in the world in general. In a type of measured virtuosity, the hands engaging in the act of painting (Gold’s hands) merge with the hands of the woman-bee, creating a suspended moment: a moment of playful painterly activity that blends the monumental with the tiny; a moment of energy-generation which always precedes the fall, against gravitation; a moment which touches the sky, as it were,a castle in the air – there it is!
Michal Naaman
January 2006
