Masplata

The great artist, just like the great illusionist conjures up the question by the viewer, “how did they do that?” What is the trick, how was it performed? How did they defy a reality, how can my eyes deceive me? The master painters had similar effect on the viewers of their work. Masplata, a 58-year-old Panamanian artist, is blessed with just such heavenly talent, turning 2-D flat surfaces into flowing planes of motion, evolving out of thin air, follicular-thin lines ooze from his fine-point pen drawn so perfectly, as if impossible without a straight edge, how an unguided hand can flow so effortlessly, seamlessly, the feat even greater, the final work even more extraordinary knowing there is absolutely no fore-direction when the artist’s pen tip meets with paper.

As the ballerina glides with effortless grace floating across the stage as a swan defying gravity, a single unchoreographed unrehearsed stroke of Masplata’s pen and perfect pointillist technique produces a symphony of images – a swirling vortex that magically gives way to a fractional cubist face, so simple, yet such complex geometric compositions, dripping with shades of Dali Surrealism, landscapes of Naturalism — plants, trees, flowers, fauna along with G-d’s creatures, birds and butterflies, including his signature image – doves, reprised repeatedly throughout his works. Human’s yes, androgynous sometimes, animals yes, sometimes, stippled and cross-hatched vignettes along with an extraordinary use of negative space, give birth to these images, and others, some crystal clear, others concealed, encoded perhaps, Davinci-esqe or created through divine inspiration as he says, the artist, Masplata simply serving as a “radio receiver,” his pen, or brush, not just an extension of his hand, or his arm, his physical being even, but his heart and the energy that flows to him from an unknown place, finds itself as extraordinary unexplainable visages that virtually, instantly, automatically, demand notice by botht he trained or untrained eye, but instantly commands collectability for its esthetic merit as much as for its investment potential.

These exquisite tableaux’s leave the viewer asking only one question, the ultimate question: How did he do that? The work of Masplata, an outsider artist whose abstract impressionism works eerily reminiscent of the masters – Picasso, Lam and Dali, is assuredly one of the greatest unknown artists of our time, does remarkably achieve such affect.

Masplata works include pen on paper, pen/paper/watercolor, works and sketches on found materials, canvas.

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