Articus 5ws, 2019
Intermedia installation by Mary De Los Santos, BFA.
Articus 5Ws investigates the nature of the real and the reproduced, the experienced and the remembered... Combining collage, painting, sculpture, interactive installation and performance, Mary creates a memory-space that is simultaneously real, reproductive and hyper-real. Is a reproduction a copy of memory? Does a copy become something real in its own right? What is the distance between the original experience, our reaction to it, our memories of it, and the 'real' imprint that is left behind?
Mary created a deck of card collages while listening to music and processing life experiences. Each collage became an investigation, abstraction or expansion of her feelings and ideas in the moment. She then translated each card into a larger painting—a reproduction of a process memory—pairing it with the song that fed the original design. Reproducing the already-reproduced memories and daily activities captured in the cards creates a tangled space that questions authenticity, identity, memory, and the newly emergent “entities” of the paintings themselves.
Mary’s sculptural works offer a related set of questions, but invites viewer participation. The sculptures are reproductions of real items she owns, carefully cast in plaster and delicately framed as a way of addressing memory as it ties to identity and life artifacts. Each sculpture is color-coded. Dark grey represents her own dark memories. Neutral grey for mixed feelings. Light grey for light memories. The objects are not for sale, however, viewers can trade a memory (written or verbal) to receive one of Mary’s memory sculptures. Limit 1 sculpture for 1 person for 1 memory.
Articus 5Ws investigates the nature of the real and the reproduced, the experienced and the remembered... Combining collage, painting, sculpture, interactive installation and performance, Mary creates a memory-space that is simultaneously real, reproductive and hyper-real. Is a reproduction a copy of memory? Does a copy become something real in its own right? What is the distance between the original experience, our reaction to it, our memories of it, and the 'real' imprint that is left behind?
Mary created a deck of card collages while listening to music and processing life experiences. Each collage became an investigation, abstraction or expansion of her feelings and ideas in the moment. She then translated each card into a larger painting—a reproduction of a process memory—pairing it with the song that fed the original design. Reproducing the already-reproduced memories and daily activities captured in the cards creates a tangled space that questions authenticity, identity, memory, and the newly emergent “entities” of the paintings themselves.
Mary’s sculptural works offer a related set of questions, but invites viewer participation. The sculptures are reproductions of real items she owns, carefully cast in plaster and delicately framed as a way of addressing memory as it ties to identity and life artifacts. Each sculpture is color-coded. Dark grey represents her own dark memories. Neutral grey for mixed feelings. Light grey for light memories. The objects are not for sale, however, viewers can trade a memory (written or verbal) to receive one of Mary’s memory sculptures. Limit 1 sculpture for 1 person for 1 memory.
