Draft:Maura Biava

Maura Biava
Maura Biava (Reggio Emilia, Italy, 1970) is a contemporary Italian and Dutch visual artist, based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Academy of Brera in Milan, Italy in 1992 and from the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1998.

Artistic practice
Maura Biava is known for her work inspired by the principles of nature. Her artistic practice exists at the intersection of mathematics, physics and spirituality. Central to this practice is the idea that information transforms and gives form to whatever or whoever receives it. Her primary mediums are ceramic sculpture, photography and drawing. Over recent decades, Biava has delved into analytic geometry and mathematics to craft, comprehend, and engage with forms. These forms become ceramic sculptures and installations that share fundamental structures that can be found both in nature and in man-made objects. In her underwater photography, she documents the actions that she undertakes in the sea. Biava experiences the underwater world as a realm that we cannot inhabit- it is another reality, just like the world of art. She compares the blue of the water to the white of the paper or canvas, a space where thoughts and imagination can be activated.

Text by curator Marco Tagliaferro :

Maura Biava searches for the sensible vitality of form and dilates its skin in space. The form acts on feelings through direct sensory perception and thus influence our biological state. A living space fully confident in his emotional intelligence. So its exact geometry is, for her, a means of psychological and behavioral analysis. Applying the principles of formal logic and mathematical laws, particularly those relating to methodological procedures. But, despite her firmness in applying these principles, Maura Biava is not a fanatic nor a mystical intransigent. Her art remains humanistic. A beautiful spiral is for example one of the results of the translation of mathematical formulas hybridized in plastic identity that characterized her research. I would not speak of the psychology of form but of a phenomenology of vision. Her work is always acting on the psychophysical perceptive apparatus of the viewer and not only on a psychological and cultural level. Each work implies symbolic meanings but at the same time works in its most immediate perception; so it can allow both an intellectual and an emotional perception, there is an interchange between the mathematical data (which is given as the model) and the pure emotion of these basic geometric shapes that correspond to regular forms of the organic world.

Work
As an interdisciplinary artist, Biava has been an artist in residence in renowned art institutions all over the world, including IBB Curaçao (2020), Le Maupas A.I.R.France (2017), International Studio and Curatorial Program, USA. (2014), Museum Carlo Zauli, Faenza, Italy (2013), American Academy in Rome, Italy (2010-2011), European Ceramic Work Center - Sunday Morning, s’Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands (2008).

Since 2005 she has taught at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, The Netherlands. In 2015 and 2016 she also taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Exhibitions
Maura Biava has exhibited worldwide including Chronos & Kairos, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; Frame, Gertrude Contemporay Art Spaces, Melbourne, Australia; New York stories, ISCP, New York City, USA; Cooling out, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, Switzerland; Data Clay, Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, USA; In forma di ceramica MCZ, Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, Venice, Italy; Diary, Cornerhouse, Manchester, United Kingdom; Drawing Typologies, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; A’dam & Eve, De Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Vis Vitalis Centraal Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands , Flash, Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom; Doride/ Ultramarine, FOAM, Photo Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Dalla cellula all’universo - dall’atomo al bit, Triennale Expo Gate, Milano, Italy; On the Edge of Vision, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India.

Solo Exhibitions
Recent solo show and presentations include: Spinning the stars, Museum BAZ, The Hague, The Netherlands.; Zero & Five, Galerie Caroline O'Breen, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Ellipsoid, Museo Zauli, Faenza, Italy; Form Informed, book launch & exhibition of prints at Printed Matter, New York City, USA; Form Informed, sculptures & prints, de Quistvitrine at the Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, The Netherlands;  Levanto, Villa Merkel, Bahnwärterhaus, Galerien der Stadt Esslingen, Germany, Medusa & Delfina, Galleri Nicolaï Wallner, Copenhagen, Denmark Solo Exhibitions in 2024: Escher in Het Paleis, Kunstmuseum, The Hague, The Netherlands and MIC. Museo internazionale delle ceramiche, Faenza, Italy.

Collections
Maura Biava's works are part of collections like the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Domeinen, Sittard; Kunstfort Centrum Voor Actuele Kunst, Vijfhuizen, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Arnhem; De NederlandscheBank, Amsterdam.