Pink Hutt Lagoon Western Australia I MASLEN & MEHRA Courtesy Galerie Caprice Horn Berlin & Art Es Magazine

Art Es no.20 features a 16 page Artists Project no.18 by London based artists Maslen & Mehra

‘Pink Hutt Lagoon Western Australia I’ is featured on the cover.

Maslen & Mehra create temporary installations in natural and urban landscapes which they then capture with a medium format film camera.

In the Mirrored series, the juxtaposition of highly urban people placed in more natural landscapes result in works that raise issues of human existence on earth and alludes to the impermanence and fragility of mankind. As city dwellers go through their day to day lives it is easy for one to forget about the experiences of wide open spaces, clean air, the smells of plants, the sounds of birds etc.. The Mirrored series relocates these people in mid stride, mid conversation to an altogether incongruous context. Soldiers appear on a volcanic beach in New Zealand, Skateboarders appear in the scrubby bush of Western Australia, Commuters appear amidst the wildflowers of the Mojave Desert.

For the Native series, sculptures of fauna that are, or once were, indigenous to the country in which they are photographed are placed in urban environments reflecting man-made structures. Native attempts to highlight the enormously complex and complicated relationship we have with the planet. Examples from the Native series include a Camargue Horse in front of the Louvre, Paris; a European Wolf and Red Squirrel in the Docklands, London; Lynx in an abandoned graffiti-covered warehouse in Berlin….

The imagery from both these series suggests a place where we can have our cake and eat it too. A paradise where we strive to co-exist with the flora and fauna of the planet and a place where we can live in our urban realities but somehow still remain connected to nature.

The resulting medium format transparencies are drum-scanned to the maximum size files in order to create high quality transparencies for light-boxes, prints on aluminium and in some cases billboards. The large-scale light-boxes are re-cycled and refurbished advertising displays from the Underground. They have chosen to re-use existing boxes, shifting the context and meaning of a familiar urban object.

Maslen & Mehra have exhibited widely internationally including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, South Korea, South Africa, Russia, UK, and the USA.

For a preview and a list of venues where Art Es is available please visit: http://www.art-es.es/

Website of Maslen & Mehra http://www.voidgallery.com/
Galerie Caprice Horn Berlin http://www.capricehorn.com