MODULAR WORKS

NOTE ABOUT ALL WORKS IN MODULAR WORKS:
This section includes a selection of works of a similar vein. (Click through the navigation above to see the works. Information on others is available upon request.)

Originally initially trained as a portrait painter, over time Mary realized that she was as much interested in the psychological charge the figures in her paintings elicited as the physicality of her medium – in how oil paint can be built up, scored, even cut, nailed and glued. This awakening led her to take her paintings out of their historically and continually resurgent illusionary role (e.g., Marlene Dumas’ portraits and Luc Tuyman’s ghostly grisailles) into a re-investigation of their object hood, first playing with paintings as modular elements that could be arranged and re-arranged. From there, she liberated the paintings completely from the wall, perching them on pedestals, standing them directly on the floor (as in A Slip of Her Red Slip), or stretching across two walls (as in Bolts of Blue). In all cases, her aim was to call into question the definition of painting as a flat, two-dimensional object. This inquiry – and her discovery of and work in the Nexus Machine Shop and Gallery – led to her pairing of paintings with such industrial materials as polished aluminum for contrast and pause, as well as the creation of an updated baroque ceiling painting and eventually to Current Works.

SUNSET STRIP(S)
Total Dimensions Variable; aluminum 5”x40”x1/4” sections; oil on wood: 6”x 36”x4” sections
Oil on wood, Teflon, aluminum

By mounting painted panels with Teflon tabs onto hand-polished, highly reflective aluminum plates, Sunset Strip(s) etc. can be endlessly reconfigured to incorporate and mirror its surroundings, calling into question the arbitrary and limiting nature of definitions – in this case, the aura of paintings as something perceived of as fixed and (seemingly) unaltered by social constructs, spatial contexts and temporal interventions.

Featured in:
Letter to Lucy, A Manifesto of Creative Redemption–In the Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies by Frank Schaffer, Apple Books, p. 277- 290.