I have to confess that I had never heard of Hungarian artist Dóra Maurer till I visited her exhibition at Tate Modern. Born in 1937, most of her creative life took place under communism which wasn’t exactly a favourable environment for conceptual art.
Much of her work is concerned with process: KV’s 1st of May Parade on Artificial Ground (see photos above) shares a commonality with Richard Long’s work yet with an overtly political angle.
This detail of Reversible and Changeable Phases of Movements No 6 shows how you can read a series of gestures in any order and make your own narrative.
The piece below, Schautafel 4, is a mathematical game where numbers in each square add up to the same total in any direction. Each twig has been coloured to represent a different value.
Much of her later work is painting but her concept of playfulness and experimentation rhymes with my own approach to making work. As Einstein said “play is the highest form of research”.