Norton Maza Chilean, b. 1971

This text can only be read one way: from left to right. However, Norton Maza's work can be understood from various perspectives, whether considering its intersections with history, sociology, biography, politics, or art. It is not cryptic but critical.

Critical of power. Ecclesiastical, economic, state power. Power understood as an oppressive, overbearing entity. It generates not a call to action but to reflection. Not through reproduction but representation. Placing the viewer in an uncomfortable location, nestled on a couch of prejudices, certainties that enter into crisis. The visitor to a work, a scenography by Norton Maza, is part of it, immerses themselves in the artist's imagination. In this position, the viewer questions the work and questions themselves.

First a grimace, then a smile, a laugh, and finally a burst of laughter. In the face of luxury, elitism. In the museum, under a colonial-style backdrop, the hubbub is heard on the mezzanine, the transition between the hidden and the venerated, and murmurs abound in the basement, the dirty conscience of the temple.

The game. From the first rudimentary toys constructed by Maza, an artist who coexists between the first and third worlds, to conceptual games in which we are the toys in the hands of power.

The dirty, the clean. Many of the works display this double aspect: an idyllic, shiny world constructed with visible discarded materials. There's a trap, there's cardboard. The artist employs an openly diverse range of resources to convey his messages. Ideas that surprise us, ridicule us, satirize us, and reflect us.

JUAN JOSÉ SANTOS - Curator and art critic