Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly: Second Nature will be on view from January 5 to February 25, 2006. A reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, January 5, 6-8pm.

In her debut exhibition at Robert Mann Gallery, Second Nature, Mary Mattingly looks at the distant future of the human race. After the fall of post-industrial civilization, nomads wear their homes on their backs like snails, using patched-together machines to gather resources from the ravaged environment. Forced to be self-sufficient, this new breed of human is detached from its fellow wanderers, isolated in austere but beautiful landscapes, preoccupied with the need for survival. Mattingly tempers her bleak outlook with a caustic sense of humor, making signposts for industrial conglomerates one of the few remaining traces of 20th-century culture.

Mattingly combines traditional photography with subtle computer enhancement to create backdrops for her unfolding narrative. She sews the costumes, designs the devices, and poses the characters in each scene. Second Nature is utterly compelling; Mattingly suggests an unnervingly believable endpoint for humanity's reckless consumption of land and natural resources.

Mary Mattingly's work has been exhibited internationally. She is the recipient of a Yale School of Art Fellowship, a Scope Artist Grant, and an Opal Filteau Photography Scholarship. She has been published in Photo District News, The Photo Review, Photograph Quarterly, and Archis Magazine.

Pressetext

Mary Mattingly: Second Nature