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Volume 20
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Naxos, Archival Pigment Print 19''x13''
Mary Mansey’s photographs have the viscosity and expressiveness of paintings. Her attention to light, reflection, and color is so intensely sensory that her images become dimensional experiences, moving out of their fixed frames and re-embodying moments in the natural world. Mansey’s representations of water act as strange symphonies of fluctuating forms and ripples. Sailboats, trees and houses become streams of color that oscillate with the water and serenity, stillness, and movement coexist.
Mansey, who is intimately familiar with the Mediterranean, has thoughtfully observed light’s play on water in infinitely diverse contexts. She finds the contemplative, sublime character of reflections fascinating because of their emotive potential. Even though she never uses human figures, Mansey’s photographs are ultimately more about people than about nature. The ripples and reflections represent ephemeral, passing moments that can be briefly perceived by the camera or human eye. Our relationship with nature, Mansey suggests, is fragile and temporal. We prolong the momentary emotional resonance of natural phenomena through memories and images. Mansey’s work invites us to contemplate our own interactions with the world around us and to feel, even if only momentarily, a transcendent inner serenity.
Mansey has exhibited her photography in Europe, Los Angeles and New York. She lives and works in Aix les Bains in the French Alps. www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Mary_Mansey.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Introspectio #02, Digital Print on Canvas 60''x 40''
Massimiliano Lattanzi’s abstract photographs of nature have a rhythmic quietness that is both soothing and unsettling. Lattanzi’s images delicately isolate poignant natural moments, yet they also effectively question our ability to fully understand the world around us. This push and pull between the beauty and the uncertainty of abstraction is what makes Lattanzi’s work compelling. Falling apart and coming together at the same time, the moments in his photographs emphasize the cyclical, process-based characteristics of nature and also suggest that ruptures in the finite world might bring us closer to the unknowable, spiritual realm.
For Lattanzi, lyricism is not only an aesthetic decision but also a form of realism. He recognizes the organically occurring poetics that characterize life—fissures in sand, ripples in water, the spaces between clouds—and by capturing these occurrences he is better able to evoke an emotive, intimate visual connection with the natural world. His images seek to entwine the eye and the mind, making sensorial perception and thought indistinguishable.
Born in Rome, Lattanzi has been exploring photography for decades, though he decided to devote himself to the arts full-time in 2004. As an artist, he actively interacts with science, literature and philosophy, bringing the lyrical and spiritual aspects of all three disciplines together in his images. Massimiliano Lattanzi’s work is exhibited internationally in both solo and group shows. www.massimilianolattanzi.org www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Massimiliano_Lattanzi.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Zen, Giclee Print on Canvas 40''x 35''
Matty Karp’s photographs have a lush, painterly viscosity, turning the traditional sleekness of the photographic image into a sensorial experience. Karp reacts to what he sees in the world—the reflections on a lake, mist, brush, or the activity on a public street—and his photographic oeuvre is resultantly diverse. While all his images convey a quiet, subtle awareness of the world’s beauty, they vacillate between being surreally composed, clearly recognizable, and almost abstract in their attention to minutiae. Sometimes, the lyricism of repeated shapes is enough to carry the eye through Karp’s images. At other times, his images convey unassuming narratives about the way people interact with their environments.
Karp works with Giclee prints on canvas and, beyond histogram corrections and crops, he does not manipulate his photographs. He does, however, continuously experiment with composition and texture. The aqueous, in-the-moment nature of his images reflects his affinity for Impressionism and post-Impressionism, two art-historical movements that valued the emotive potential of not-quite-representational shapes and color.
A self taught photographer, Karp is a leading Venture Capitalist in Israel who formerly served as a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force. He pursues art-making in addition to his business career and he has exhibited work at the Jerusalem Center for Performing Arts and at Nof Tavor Gallery in Kibbutz Mizra. www.mattykarp.com www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Matty_Karp.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Blue Rooster in the Moonlight on a Rainy Night, Digital 16.5''x12''
The ancient history of Japanese art is an aura that constantly surrounds artist Masahiko Saga. As he works, he does not try to resuscitate bygone eras, but he knows that his sensibility has been visibly influenced by the symbolically illustrative Japanese artists that preceded him. The blue rooster, a recurrent motif in his work, stoically moves through the mystical landscape of Saga’s digital prints, imbuing it with stalwart consistency. Even when his prints swell with activity, Saga always maintains a sense of stillness and control. His visual narratives are as much about quietude as they are about motion.
Saga’s prints suggest an implicit collection of symbols. The settings—often deeps expanses of sky or water—seem emblematic of the scope of time. The figures and objects seem to stand in for past histories and approaching futures, shepherding collected cultural knowledge into a new digital era.
While Saga’s work grows out of aged traditions, his working processes are far from dated. A skilled digital draftsman, Saga uses Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Gradient Mesh to craft his images. The finished prints are sleek and intentional, existing somewhere between the story-driven world of illustration and the more esoteric world of high art. Saga lives and works in Kyoto, Japan. www.stoned-circle.net
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Masahiko_Saga.aspx |
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Artist Profiles -
Volume 20
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Pla-Sur, Acrylic & Mixed Media on paper Covered Steel Back 20''x39.5''
Michael Berger sends audiences on an unforgettable expedition through his colorful intergalactic dreamscapes. Sometimes wild and imaginative, other times serene and introspective Berger lets loose on canvas with acrylic and mixed media, forging a unique path with his distinctive style and subject matter. In this world spaceships dodge cosmic debris, planetoids race towards the edge of unknown universes, and brilliant constellations burn bright in the skies and in our mind's eye. Other works remain light-hearted and witty, pleasing viewers with naïf characters and child-like visions of reality. His creative process can be as exciting as the finished product; Berger has experimented with oil pastels, acrylics, wood, plastics and a variety of textured papers. His most innovative technique allows the finished piece to be altered by the viewer employing a combination of magnets, styrofoam and steel, so that audiences may move various elements around the canvas as they see fit. This type of interaction is exactly what Berger intends as he creates a work. “If there should be one over all message,” Berger explains, “it might be something like ‘Life and this universe is wonderful so come on and explore.’”
He has an educational and career background in Geology and Geochemistry, and he is also influenced by extensive travels throughout Europe, Africa and the Americas. Berger lives and works in Switzerland. www.berger-art.ch
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Michael_Berger.aspx |
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Artist Profiles - Volume 20
Feature Articles - Volume 20
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