Mary Mocas
Website
Social
Other Social
(415) 777-9448
I enter abstraction through the aerial landscape. In my work I meld an array of perspectives: the bird’s eye view of sky and land formations as they appear to slowly pass the window, the view straight below, which flattens the world into two dimensions, and the panoramic view from the pilot’s seat which depicts vastness and speed.
There are multiple layers to each story I tell. The present, the visible, the surface is most obvious, but there is also the past, the hidden historical formations. I have been trying to explain the history by displaying the present, but the limitation of two dimensions conceals the narrative. That limitation has been circumvented in my two sided works and the story has unfolded.
I repurpose found paper to project time into this conversation. In both freestanding and wall hung work, layers of history are fused, separated, and re-formed into new configurations, new maps of my experience. In the freestanding pieces, the use of a clear matrix marks both arrival and departure. The pieces are not static, but depict and require movement.
My subjects are age and beauty. Deterioration and decay are unavoidable with the materials of my practice. Time’s consequences can be slowed, but not halted. Preservation dulls the layers of memory and hides the meaning of the stories. That creates another kind of beauty—that of the cumulative experience.
I archive time by collecting material from the places I visit. By using the artifacts of my travels, material and process navigate place. I am an outsider and a traveler, moving across the landscape, stealing a forgotten bit of it for my archive. I am a witness, only visiting, archiving place in order to imagine belonging.
