First Artist on Mars
New Work by Jason Mortara
Photographs, Paintings, Video, and Installation
November 5th - December 4th, 2004

First Artist on Mars

For his first major solo exhibition, Jason Mortara has constructed an alien landscape reminiscent of science fiction and staked his claim to be the “first artist on Mars.”

A monitor in one corner of the gallery plays footage from the Rover expedition beside still photographs sent back from the red planet which document the installations made by Mortara while on his mission. But Mars, for Mortara, is not only a physical place. Like Stanley Kubrick in 2001, in outer space he confronts the internal workings of the mind and the metaphyscial limits of the human condition. In the center of the gallery stands a thirteen-foot high, glowing, translucent, shingled house that remains sealed shut like the amnesia of the unconscious, but seems to speak to the childhood experiences of home that orient us in life. And, on the walls, hang images of hands (painted from stock photography found in image banks) which extend this psychological study as the authoritative hands of a parent, and present ominous figures of death and eternity as the hands of God.

- Clark Buckner

Photos

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