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Exploring the language and uses of photography, Mary Pinto’s work addresses the natural world and our relationship to it. By combining contemporary materials with historic techniques, the printing process becomes a series of experiments that yield one-of-a-kind images. Her work recalls the early stages of photographic investigation and conjures a sense of wonder in the present. Mary Pinto has exhibited her work widely: in New York, she has shown her artwork at Hofstra University Museum, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, St. Thomas Aquinas College and Safe-T-Gallery; and in Spain, at Spectrum Gallery, L'Angelot Contemporary Art Association and Canal de Isabel II. Her work was included in Minute, a widely exhibited and collected portfolio of emerging artists published by Artists’ Space in 2001. She has been awarded residency fellowships at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Artists’ Enclave at I-Park in Connecticut. Currently, she is curating a permanent art installation in Queens for Art Connects New York. Her work can be found in the Library of Congress, the Cuenca International Museum of Electrography, the Joan Flasch Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and numerous private collections. She received her M.F.A. from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in 1999.
From the Hofstra University Museum Ancient Echoes in Contemporary Printmaking catalog essay: Mary Pinto's photograms … entice the viewer to come closer … to uncover the mysterious imagery they contain. Pinto uses the cameraless photographic process pioneered by William Henry Fox Talbot and made popular by Man Ray. She places objects (whether it be grains of salt, beads, or a plastic flower stem) directly upon color negative paper and exposes them to light, creating a negative image. Her work has a terrific range – from her Repair series (which brings to mind medical sutures or stitches), to the lush botanics of Flowers and Things; to the realm of science fiction come alive in her installation Constellation -- continuously testing the medium's boundaries. In her Chemical Landscapes series we find no additives, but through a hyper-exposure process of the development agent to light, the work exudes the aura of a pastoral landscape. Soft gradient hues hum and flow seamlessly into one another, appearing as sunlit horizon floating above an undulating sea. In Pinto's Red Giant c-print installation, a semi-random regrouping of portions of her previous works, the individual elements congeal into a formation not unlike the tiny platelets found in blood plasma. The work's title evokes the greatest of celestial behemoths, yet also relates to the tiniest of human cellular structures. Each individual pigment coalesces together as if in a star cluster. In her Constellation installation, Pinto meticulously cuts out circular shapes from individual images of her c-prints and lines an entire gallery wall with a series of nebulous planetary-like formations. It is the mark of true confidence for an artist to take an original print and then rework it. Pinto herself is witnessing a birth: that of herself as an artist who is soon to make her mark, shining as bright as the star clusters invoked by her creations. It is a lesson that no progress can be made without letting go of the old in order to create the new. -Olympia Lambert
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