MARRIA PRATTS: GHOST BALLADE
Carl Kostyál is delighted to present ‘Ghost Ballade’, the fourth solo exhibition of Spanish artist Marria Pratts (b. 1988 in Barcelona) with Carl Kostyál and the artist’s solo debut in Sweden at Hospitalet, Stockholm.
June 5 – August 23, 2025
Marria’s paintings occupy that space between untamed and energetic abstraction that presents itself, and hieroglyphs that evoke childlike figurative representations, reminiscent of humanity’s earliest symbolic expressions found in cave interiors: the primordial urge to create.
Her work shows a vitalistic creative process marked by playfulness and emotional tension, revealing an honest, intimate relationship with her art, and demonstrating the inseparable connection between art and life. It is not surprising that, after navigating the labyrinthine, beautiful, and terrifying journey of motherhood, her work takes on the tone of a passionate confessional diary. This invites us to consider ways of mothering that are alien (or even opposed) to the norms and expectations set —consciously and as a control strategy— by institutionalised heteropatriarchal society.
The materiality of Marria’s paintings—with their layered textures, scratches, and drips— seems to narrate here the origin of the world from her subjective viewpoint. It speaks of her personal Big Bang, of the concentric circles of attraction and repulsion generated by the act of co-parenting and accompanying a loved one in the gestation process and nurturing from a place devoid of referents and visibility. The organic, the viscous, the blood, the milk, the viscera, the womb that welcomes, the feeding apple, the sleep deprivation—not just hours of sleep, but also space to dream—the counting of hours, the smiling faces, and the ghosts—which are now three— all now appear in her canvases. Marria seems more in tune than ever with earthy forces, influenced by a new relationship with the body and biology, questioning the singularity of self when three beings are intertwined.
These paintings reaffirm Marria’s creative commitment to the profound impact of a child’s arrival, which disrupts and integrates the domestic and caregiving aspects into all dimensions of the mother’s life. They express infatuation, ecstasy and tenderness, but also anxiety, fear, and exhaustion. They celebrate the powerful female body and, out of fascination, pay homage to her life partner, Alba, and are a love letter to her son, Claus.