Mystery Magnet by Miet Warlop in Naves Matadero

Description of project by María Peláez

The works of Belgian artist Miet Warlop are living canvases with strokes of silent humour. Her work shifts between the visual arts, performance and theatre. With a Master’s Degree in Multimedia Arts from KASK (Ghent), she won the Franciscus Pycke Jury Award and the prize for Best Young Theatre Work 2004 for her graduation project, Huilend Hert, Aangeschoten Wild. Since then she has presented her work around the world, breaking moulds across all genres.

For Mystery Magnet (2012) she was chosen by British theatre director Katie Mitchell for the Stuckemarkt, which is part of the renowned German theatre festival Theatertreffen (Berliner Festspiele, Berlin) where young theatre creators make themselves known. Mitchell praised Warlop’s control of theatricality, humour and unmistakable visual signature.

Mystery Magnet is an absurd and magical show in continual transformation, where nothing is what it seems. It portrays contemporary surrealism, an experimental terrain where outlandish tenderness, desensitised cruelty, brilliant promises and an unstoppable destruction all share the same space.

The observer steps inside Warlop’s mind, and what do they see? Hairy beings, a choir of mannequins, gravitational darts, balloons, horse-women, people rushing off and an inflatable shark. Figures with no apparent connection and sculptures that reclaim their place as theatrical creatures. “Mystery Magnet depicts an enchanted world where humour is born of sadness and magic of the prosaic”, says Warlop. A universe inspired by comics and pictorial action, with the aim of developing an endless battle of materials, shapes and colours. The result is a succession of scenes that are woven without any apparent logic, seeking to surprise the observer and to bring them, along with the actors, to the very limits of the imaginable.