Alexandra Mas

Alexandra Mas is a French artist born in 1978 in Sibiu, Romania.Immersed into the arts when only an infant, at 14 years old she began her formal education at Nicolae Tonitza, the Art Institute in Bucharest, Romania. She meets the famous engraver Marcel Chirnoaga, who mentored her for a number of years. Alexandra attended UNAB (the National University of Art, Bucharest), where she majored in Graphic Design ans Plastic Arts under the tutelage of Professor Mihai Manescu. Her regular visits to Paris resulted in a desire to continue her instruction there, and led to her enrolling at the Modern Art and Design Superior School (ESAM-design) in 2001. There, she graduated top of the year in Design and Interior Architecture. Alexandra’s work led to a number of opportunities in the commercial world, including Christian Dior, the Louvre Museum, Marsu Productions, and other private commands. From 2006 to 2009 Alexandra left Europe for California, where she continued to paint and deliver commercial graphic design projects while directing and teaching at a talent school for young children in Beverly Hills. She comes back to France in 2009, decided to dedicate her-self entirely to her artwork.Alexandra has captured the attention of art critic Jean Deulceux,lecturer at ISAAA (Institut supérieur des Arts appliqués). At the same time she becomes the muse and egerie of fashion designer Eric Tibusch with whom she creates the art-to-wear (art-à-porter), an innovative couture concept that starts areal arty vogue in the fashion world. Her inspiration comes from contemporaneous ballet and music, the collective memory and sensitive social subjects like ecology, consumerism or inner questioning.
She is invited to be part of the book “Nude Art Today”,164 artists like Richard Prince, Eric Fischl, Mel Ramos, John De Andrea, George Condo, Pierre et Gilles, Choi Xoooang......Alexandra Mas selected photos taken from her performances and a pictography from her collective memory work made in collaboration with Make Up For Ever .
Painting-danseurs and muses
The artist is capturing the symbolism and the emotions of bodies in movements up to the illustration of sound itself. Between action painting and expressionism Alexandra Mas finds a mediator poetical place. Alexandra Mas has captured the attention of many art critics like Jean Deulceux, art critic and historian .He describes her work :
"Alexandra MAS is one of these rare beings that make dreams come alive. She is sharing a universe taken from poetry with a veridical technical skill. Through her compositions she manages to make us travel into her fantasy world. The movement is the main theme of her paintings; her art budges in front of our eyes. She is taking us to a kinetic frontier. We can find a certain chrono-photography close to Muybridge or Marey’s art. The artist is more than a creator, but an observer that rewrites emotions."
Vanitas
This classical subject that inspires artists since centuries, is literally meaning "lightness". The Vanitas are here to remind our fragility and fast passage on earth. "Memento Mori" is telling us Alexandra Mas. Present in her Art-to-Wear work, in some paintings and small sculptures, it is a very intimate theme for her. Symbolised by the human skull, by withered flowers, rotten fruits, by clepsydras or watches, even musical sound and instruments, the fast passage of life is a theme that celebrates life and human emotions. Both her themes, dancers and vanitas, face to face, give us a rather epicurean understanding; the artist is reminding that life is beautiful but too short to concentrate on useless, earthly goods
"The artist is immersing us in this profound introspection of our society. Her Vanitas maintain the original idea: confront men to the ineluctable end of his existence. Alexandra Mas’ pictorial or sculptural compositions are remarkable because they wilfully turn towards life’s energy, this Proto-Matter.
Her smiling vanitas snub the final outcome"
Photography & Pictography
Pictography
"Pictography, expression and communication by means of pictures and drawings having a communicative aim. These pictures and drawings (called pictographs) are usually considered to be a forerunner of true writing and are characterized by stereotyped execution and by omission of all details not necessary for the expression of the communication. (Pictographs that are drawn or painted on rocks are known as petrograms; those that are incised or carved on rocks are called petroglyphs.)"
A basic pictography of Alexandra Mas is Androïde
This pictographic work is the artist interpretation for the perfect woman. Just like Fritz Lang’s movie, “Metropolis” 1927, like Queen’s “Radio Gaga”, like the “5th element” by Luc Besson, and again 2006 “Metropolis”, Japanese animation movie, Alexandra Mas is giving us here her vision of the woman perfected by the future technologies. As very often in her work, we find here her approach to the sexuality, not androgyny, but a real feminine, ageless asexual woman.
"By seeking physical perfection by any means, the women forget their primordial role, to give life” Metropolis was a man made machine, Androïde is a machined woman."
Ecological work-Time's Dawn
Alexandra Mas developed the militant theme of « Time's Dawn »(Aurore des Temps) to offer the viewers a certain indignation, feeling, present in the images where natural forces like the fire, wind or water take a human envelope to express their pain
"In old times, humans would look at the skies convinced by the presence of Gods. This pictographic works are questioning the evolution of our evil impact on the earth. The photography is here but a tool, next to the painting bush, the gold foil or the free hand electronic pen. Alexandra Mas masters sumptuously this unique technic, the pictographic work, which answers even physically to this question of nature respect, as they are made with a “ImprimVert” ink on a 100% recycled support, in a wood box."
She imagined also a short movie produced by and with the French actress Aurore Tomé, who is incarnating all this natural forces, a video of archive images and an animation in the purposes to give the keys to this art works.
Body painting
The question raised in this works is the collective memory, without avoiding the thin border to neither kitsch nor the clichés; Alexandra Mas is taking us to a journey from modern to contemporaneous artists deeply rooted into everyman’s mind. It is a photography and pictography collection the artist presented both in London and Paris.
"The artist is inviting us to a profound introspection. The consumerist spectator is adulating today his T.V. heroes and the movies stars. Artists like Warhol or Rosenquist have also denounced while glorifying this façade muses. Alexandra Mas is refreshing this subject highlighting our collective memory. "
Drawing
Alexandra Mas elaborates many drawings, on paper, metal or canvas, even in frescoes. Travels, dreams, portraits, studies for her paintings, are the list of what may inspire the artist. The metal engraving is a craft that she learned from famous artist M. Chirnoaga when she was only fourteen years old. What characterizes her engraving technique is the glibness of her execution. If most engravers are copying previous drawings on the metal plates, Alexandra Mas is drawing directly on it, with a bold line. In this way the emotion is direct, the drawings are alive.
Art-à-Porter
Art-to-Wear is a concept by Alexandra Mas and couturier Eric Tibusch developed in 2009. Following the footsteps of Elsa Schiaparelli who was the first to invite artists to be part of her fashion designs, or who got inspiration from art, Alexandra Mas and Eric Tibusch are the very first couturier-artist couple to actually develop this precise technique, illustrated in 2010 by Marie Christiane Marek, reporter for the AFP (l'Agence France-Presse).
Showed twice a year during the haute couture week in Paris, the "art-à-porter" expression is used today by several brands for all kinds of art prints or art inspired collections.
The Magnifisme
The Magnfisme is a new born artistic movement created by Alexandra Mas and Christopher Lavenaire, movement militating for the art as an aesthetical experience with a sense. "I feel, there for I am","Beauty has sense when nihilism is just denial"
For the artist, the intuition is the main engine of aesthetic experience.
"Isolated from pragmatism, the intuition is a free esthetical experience generator, there for, an art generator as well"
The eyes too educated and refined can corrupt the emotions in the absence of a contemplative attitude. This Intuition is what separates art from craftsmanship, from knowhow, from design and other substitutes "because in art, technique is not important, it is but a tool among others to be used and surpass for a perfectly free expression ."
All artistic emotions are not triggered by the actions, events or facts but by the natural or artistic representations.
"Art and nature have this divine capacity to induce automatic sensations by a purely esthetical trigger. With their esthetical quality they call at our deepest emotions there for they must be also instructive. All this panel of emotions are not activated thanks to an action or an event, they are magnified by a depiction, natural or artistic, of an emotional path."
On May 17, 2011,Alexandra Mas attend the 'Politics Of Love' next to Dominique Desseigne, Mallika Sherawat in Cannes, France.
Fashion
Alexandra Mas worked with the fashion designer Eric Tibusch with whom she creates the art-to-wear (art-à-porter). She became his muse and the image for most of his campaigns.
2011:
* Collection Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2011 by Tibusch.
2013:
* Parade fashion week haute couture spring,summer,2013
2014:
* Fashion Weeks,Paris,september 2014
Art Shows
1997 : Biennale de petite gravure, exposition de groupe, Uzice<Beograd
1998: Salon d’Automne, exposition de groupe, UAP, Bucarest
1999 :
* Triennale de gravure, exposition de groupe, Kanagawa, Japan
* Salon d’Automne, exosition de groupe, UAP, Bucarest
2000 : Gravure, HVB, Bucarest
2002 : Atelier 35, exposition de groupe, Constanta
2006 : Performance & peintures, espace éphémère rue Vivienne, Paris
2011 :
* BodyPaint, Cielo Galery, London W1
* Performance bodypainting, Festival des Passages, Paris <
* Les Danseurs, Galerie NK , Paris
* BodyPaint, galerie Memmi, Paris
2012 :
* BodyPaint et L’art à Porter, Mad Generation, Paris
* Le Portrait, exposition de groupe, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris
* Le Nu, exposition de groupe, Galerie Claire Corcia, Paris
2013:
* L'Aurore des Temps, pictographies, Galerie C. Bortone, Paris
* Le Salon d'Automne, exposition de groupe,Grand Palais Paris
* GemlucArt, exposition de groupe, Monaco
* Musée des Beaux Arts, Saint-Petersburg
* Galerie Be Espace, Paris Photo ,exposition de groupe, Paris 11
2014:
* Galerie Be Espace, Paris
* Espace Ticolas, Paris 08, permanance selection des pictographies "BodyPaint"
2015: Future-Show in Bordeaux, vernissage February 5, 2015.

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