Spotlight: Marina Maturana García, '...And I roll the dice because the current takes me'

Tell us about this series:

"'... And I roll the dice because the current takes me' is an ongoing pictorial project that stems from the ebb and flow of creation, a drift between play and exhaustion, myth and hyperreality, playful, ironic, and critical. The works - comprised of medium- and large-format paintings on unframed, unprimed canvases - follow the ambiguous trajectory of characters who, despite their seeming unrelatedness, are found connected through narrative, expressiveness, the grotesque, and the existential and ironic.

"With a marked literary sensibility, the project presents an allegory of the contemporary artist: fragile, split, between the impulse to create and the trap of production. From this critical perspective, we understand painting as a secular ritual of resistance to the imperative of instrumental rationality that predominates today. Far from being configured within a simple aesthetic medium, the practice constitutes a tactic of intentional deflection, where gestures pervert normative codes through strategies based on chance, deliberate deformation, error, and the absence of premeditation.

"Inspired by the game of the goose, the project unfolds like a board where each square is a scene, a test, or a return, governed by alien rules and repeating cycles. In this absurd and ritualistic itinerary, painting appears as an act of resistance: a refuge where error, humour, stolen reference, and nameless emotion open cracks in the algorithm, in the personal brand, in the domesticated narrative of success."

Tell us about your practice:

"Everyday life and identity are the keys that run through my artistic practice. Although they are often presented hidden under symbolic or narrative layers, these dimensions - the personal, the popular, the emotional - transversally structure my way of producing and seeing. I work from a present saturated with stimuli and fictions, where identities become liquid, narratives fragment, and the sense of belonging is redefined between digital archives, shared affections, and broken
promises.

"In this context, painting becomes for me a space of affective friction: a territory where the intimate and the collective, the precarious and the epic, the anachronistic and the digital intertwine. I don't paint to represent, but to summon. The symbolic re-enchants the material and opens cracks in the productive logic. I am interested in what wobbles, what makes one uncomfortable, what persists even if I don't quite know where it's going.

"My practice moves between medium and large-format painting, more stable in its
formalisation, and technological or installation projects, conceived from a place and context. Through this multidisciplinary drift - which I like to think of through the figure of the DJ - I mix inherited images, popular gestures, contemporary fictions, and archival remnants in a "remix" that reveals tensions rather than solutions. Authorship blurs, play reappears, and myth - far from all nostalgia - is activated as a critical tool.

"The scenes I paint follow a vital transition that organizes the narrative: a naïve entry into art as a leap of faith (diving figures, playful dances), an unstable knot full of contradictions (chess, sports, wrestling, balance), and a symbolic outcome where the death of the genuine does not imply the end, but rather the persistence of the gesture. Painting thus becomes a way of continuing, even if it is not entirely clear why. The image resists, is embodied, escapes. This vital and aesthetic framework gives rise to the synopsis of this project: a visual journey structured in three phases - beginning, middle, and end - that proposes a critical, fictional, and
symbolic look at art as play, as combat, and as survival.

"Thus, a narrative is articulated between the intimate and the collective, where the anachronistic and the digital, the precarious and the epic, coexist in constant tension. Knights who slay death, dances and sportsmanship, competition, strategy, and innocence. This is not about illustrating ideas, but about embodying questions: what is lost when desire is professionalised? What remains of the artist when everything can be monetized? Where does play survive?

Painting, then, becomes a space of emotional friction. A territory where fiction and the genuine embrace, where melancholy blends with the vital impulse to continue painting, even without knowing why."

With roots between Murcia and Almería, Marina Maturana García lives in Málaga, where she completed a Master's in Artistic Production at the UMA. In 2012, she enrolled at the Vera Art School in Almería, where she furthered her training in painting. That same year, she completed her Elementary Music Degree.

In 2013, she moved to Murcia, where she continued her experiments throughout her studies. Awarded a scholarship in 2019 from the London College of Communication for a degree in Illustration & Visual Media, she made the drastic decision to leave her hometown, thus changing her creative perspective. This led to her continuing her artistic studies in Valencia. She also completed training,
eventually earning a degree in Classical Guitar from the Murcia Conservatory of
Music.

Marina Maturana García has exhibited her work in venues such as the Museo de la Ciudad de Murcia, Sala La Cárcel, and the Ibercaja Foundation in Zaragoza, among
others. She has also participated in various volunteer and artistic internships
with organisations in Germany, Finland, and Croatia.