PRESS

Ma Jia: Yesterday
17. 01. – 06. 03. 2024


Ma Jia (born in 1981 in China, she currently lives and works between Vienna & Beijing)
Ma Jia is primarily known for her massive metal sculptures, exhibited in both galleries and public spaces. She utilizes found industrial objects and metal pipes in her work. Since 2020, her focus has shifted to pipes from gas and oil pipelines. Although these works predate the war in Ukraine, the materials have gained additional significance as natural gas prices rise and the conflict persists. These appropriated materials, marked by cuts, welds, and graphic notations, imbue her sculptures with layers of cultural meaning.
Ma Jia studied painting in Hangzhou and Beijing before entering the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Heimo Zobernig. Originally a figurative painter, her work has evolved in recent years, incorporating more sculptural elements and marking a significant shift in her approach to painting.
Some of her recent paintings utilize rolls of unstretched industrial fabrics. Ma Jia has developed a unique stamping method, pressing the paint onto the fabric without a paintbrush, giving them the appearance of mass-produced works.
This technique of pressing color onto the fabric's surface connects with traditional Chinese woodblock stamps used for signatures and modern industrialized printing processes common in contemporary and modern art.
Ma Jia’s methodology fuses abstract painting language with industrial materials. She employs found objects, incised by laser-cutting techniques on rusted metal plates, replacing the traditional brush and canvas. The geometric forms found in her work parallel the traditional Chinese Wuxia literary style, which embodies the concept of "to have is to have nothing; to have nothing is to have." As Ma Jia states, “When the words are filtered out, it becomes the empty hollow cut geometry that generates meaning.”
For her exhibition at gezwanzig, Ma Jia has created a new edition. 

Contact the gallery at office@gezwanzig.com for images and details.