The following presents PART II of my in-depth interview with Philadelphia visual artist Mauro Zamora. . . . To jump directly to Part I click here (or just scroll down.)
A full text of the continuation - including Parts II & III - is available at the extension site.
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Part II - Interview with Mauro Zamora
SC: Let’s get a bit into the silhouette, which was the topic of the first sentence of my Diatribe.. I’m interested in the quote ‘long story’ of how you came to it, and the last points in your Response.which related it to memory.
MZ: I came to use the silhouette because I wanted to play with images that straddled the line so to speak. And initially the idea of using the silhouette was a way of dealing with that because a silhouette is both specific and generic at the same time, or, you could say, local and global. Overall it’s a symbol—if you make a silhouette of a trash bag it’s a symbol of a trash bag. At the same time it’s very specific, because it can’t be taken as much else other than a trash bag; but it has no modeling, it’s just a simple thing. That became a very interesting way for me to think about dealing with images and what the images mean, and how to juxtapose those images. It was also an interesting way to deal with visual space, because if everything’s flattened out there's not a lot of depth, and you have to create visual space through line and angle and suggestion as opposed to modeling and light and air. So it made Painting more interesting for me, and it made dealing with representational things or objects more interesting for me.
...Silhouette was tied to memory for me when I first began to use it because I felt that’s how memories worked to begin with. Memory is unreliable, so in recalling things from the past they could be this way or they could be that way, they're generic and specific.
SC: Absolutely.
MZ: And I don’t know that any of the paintings really dealt with the issue of memory but I liked this idea that they straddled this line, that it could be either / or, yea or nay. And that’s been a big influence throughout all my work, this idea of the fine line between one thing or another, where it could go either way, or almost be both things at the same time depending on how you look at it and who you are. And I guess a big influence in even thinking of using the silhouette was [Jorge Luis ] Borges, not that he ever talked about it, but his work has such a sense of memory to it and such a sense of mystery to it that I always loved. And when I started thinking about how in nature a silhouette is formed, or when a silhouette is formed, it has to do with the end of the day or the very beginning of the day. At dawn or during the gloaming is when you get a silhouette, anytime the light falls behind something. I always felt those times of day to be very mysterious, and, at least within Western literature, that’s the time when evil things happen. Looking back through the Romantic era, Frankenstein or Dracula especially… the vampire kills at night until the dawn, and, as the story’s told, they wait until almost the very last moment to get their last feed. It’s an eerie part of the day. So the way the silhouette sits on a line, being generic and specific, the time of day that gives us the silhouette naturally also is on a line—it’s the edge of the day… or… the edge of the night. And that time, the gloaming, has a very distinct mood, which I purposely wanted in my work. It was something that I wanted to capture. So using the silhouette seemed like a way for me to be able to do that.
SC: Those are my favorite times of day too. And I think there’s always a measure of unreality about it. [Mauro nods] And there are numerous factors involved in that: it’s partly because people usually aren’t around, there’s a stillness…and the consistency of the light—everything’s kind of evened out. There’s a sort of, for lack of a better word, cinematic quality to it.
MZ: Mm-hmm.
SC: It’s so detached from your everyday life, there’s something really beautiful about that.
MZ: I also feel like it’s the time of day where one most experiences time.
SC: Yes.
MZ: As we’re going through the day the light is somewhat generic—give or take the weather— and the day can pass by and you don’t necessarily experience the time. But at dawn and dusk, during the gloaming, you do, because very quickly you see the change, you actually feel it. Those moments when we actually have the ability to experience the fleetingness of that, it’s a very unique 'human experience, because we’re aware of it. So, I also thought, "Painting has a lot of things, but it never has time."
SC: Except when people specifically try to assert that, Cubism and whatnot… or, at least those movements tried to experiment with that.
MZ: Right, but those things don’t read that way, at least not for me. That was always the qualm I had when people talked about Cubism, oh we’re dealing with drawing this image in the round in 2-D… I just thought it doesn’t read that way, it reads like something else.
SC: The theory’s there but is that how you experience it.
MZ: Exactly. And it’s not that anyone’s going to look at my paintings and experience time either, but I like that possibility.
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SC: Something we both wrote on, which I'd suggest relates extensively to what we've just discussed, is the concept of the uncanny—this kind of heightened awareness of the unreality, or meta-reality, or under-reality...being attached to something that is general and yet specific, and tied to the idea of the familiar and strange. For me that feeling is definitely realized in your work. And it does have to do with time, and memory is an element within it—because how you felt it worked is actually how it works, how our minds work, our mental schema: general concepts and specific experiences. Is part of the mood you want to capture something you connect specifically to the uncanny?
MZ: In reading Freud’s "Uncanny", it definitely has to do with time, memory, remembrance…you witness a scene and that scene is familiar but unfamiliar—it’s unheimlich, we all know that feeling. And to me it ties directly to mood, you only get that feeling because there's a mood. So yeah, the uncanny is important to me and to the work because that essay is a way of continually going back and thinking about mood and how to create that kind of mood. And part of what’s great about that mood is that it’s mysterious—you know why, but you don’t know why. It’s again that idea of the gloaming being on the edge of the day or the edge of time, because you don’t know what’s next. And there are many things out there that have that mood applied to it, it can be like varnish.
SC: What do you mean by that, what does varnish mean in that way?
MZ: This goes to classical training I guess, but some artists apply varnish to their paintings when they’re done, and it has to do with technical issues but it also has to do with a look.
SC: It creates depth in a way, a richness.
MZ: It adds to it or changes it. I've always thought the media does that, the media paints what it wants with its brush of colors, but its colors happen to be a slant towards this side of the politics or a slant towards that. So there's no reason why a person whose dealing with images can’t do the same thing, instead of picking up your varnish you’re picking up your mood, you apply it, add it to the scenario you're thinking about or creating. In a way Freud’s essay kind of breaks it down, and other artists’ writings I’ve read discussing the uncanny note this as well. I'm not saying it’s this mechanical sort of thing, you only know you get to that mood when you get to it. For me, the best work is always work that forces you to be outside yourself, because when you’re forced to be outside yourself or outside the situation that you’re comfortable in then you’ve got to think about where you’re at and why you're there.
SC: Which to me presents displacement as a key aspect and experience, being outside yourself and your surroundings but at the same time not entirely disconnected from either. I see this as tying to your work and imagery as a whole—that you're not doing something completely distanced from reality because that’s not as disconcerting or enticing a place to be as on the edge of that, or finding that fine line. But if mood is like varnish it’s also more difficult, because it’s not something where you can just pick up one thing and say here’s how I achieve this. It’s trickier, maybe you don’t know exactly how you get it. So does what you said about finding the mood refer at all to having to step back and see how it comes into the work?
MZ: No, not necessarily, more like does the image allow you to feel that sense of being displaced. I know when I’ve hit that point or reached that mood when I can say to myself "Oh, that’s weird." And I think you can know how you might obtain a mood because it’s around us all over the place.
SC: But representation is much different than reality.
MZ: Of course, but these aren’t necessarily things that we feel in reality. It has to do more with the unconscious in a way, and it obviously relates more to a dream-state then our reality. For example, in this town we have three or four foggy nights a year, so those are the few times of the year you get that feeling because of that effect.
SC: Still, capturing that feeling isn’t easy.
MZ: True, but you don’t have to paint fog to capture that feeling, there are so many other things. And what’s weird to you isn’t what’s weird to me, it’s kind of a give and take. All I can do if I’m trying to create that mood is see whether it’s coming across for me personally.
SC: Well what’s interesting about that, and I think it’s a strength of your work, is that you’re not going for the obvious in that. You’re not using obvious imagery to create it.
MZ: Well… I mean [Smiling] that’s been done before, right?
SC: So has everything, it doesn’t stop people from doing it.
MZ: Well, [Smiling] okay. But, you know, I grew up in more or less the Southwest and everything’s bright and the sky is always blue, so my relation and interaction with colors wasn’t from the secondary/tertiary side of the palette, it was always prismatic so to speak. So that became a challenge—how do I make kooky, eerie things using fun, sweet little colors? [Laughs] That was part of it, I identify with those colors to begin with and I didn’t want to make Pop Art. Even though it’s a little pop-y, maybe. [Laughs]
SC: But that’s one of the contradictions, right? There's face value and then there's something you think it is, but it’s not that, then it sort of is that, then it isn’t, then it is...I think that’s what keeps you in the image. And you say "that’s been done before" but not every artist goes in there to challenge themselves, some artists say what’s my most direct route to getting this. So I’d say that’s an important distinction.
To Be Continued in Part III ...
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