Blending and recombining genres from contemporary and ancient cultures, utilizing the tools of photography and painting with a kind of sensuous aesthetic, I am looking for a luminous language where the spirit and the material can work together to form a new identity and perception of self.
About Aline
Aline Mare began her career in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, coming out of a background of theatre, experimental film, and installation art. She was an early member of Collaborative Projects, a collective formed in downtown New York City and performed in a multi-media partnership, Erotic Psyche, a film and music extravaganza exploring the body and the senses, which toured extensively in Manhattan and Europe throughout the ’80s.
She completed undergraduate work at SUNY Buffalo’s Center for Media Studies and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute, where she produced the film Saline’s Solution, a series of installations and performances that dealt with abortion from a feminist point of view, which garnered support and awards internationally, exhibiting at The Cinematheque in SF, The Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. She has received several grants and residencies including Fourwinds in Aureille, France, a 2015 Sino-American art tour in Shanghai, Starry Nights in New Mexico, Headlands Center for the Arts, Kala, Film Arts Foundation, New Langton Arts in SF and a New York State Residency for the Arts.
In 2000 she received a Headlands Center for the Arts residency where she created an installation project examining the life of friend and writer Kathy Acker dealing with her courageous fight against the breast cancer that claimed her life in 1997. In 2004 she produced a collaborative book entitled Cell/Self, published by Spider Woman Press with poet and translator OIivia Sears, dealing with the horror and beauty of our biotech future and its impact on our sense of identity. In 2018 she exhibited a solo show: Requiem: Aching for Acker at the Mike Kelly Gallery in Los Angeles where she revisited Kathy Acker twenty years after her death — a mixed media interpretation of Acker’s final poem in a show that gathered much media attention.
She continues to expand her work, concentrating on mixed media and installation, exploring the body and metaphors of nature and its transformative relationship to the human psyche and the state of our planet. New works have been exhibited locally and internationally in venues including the Griffin Museum, Turtle Bay Museum, Thoreau Center in San Francisco, the Santa Monica Museum, San Luis Obispo Museum, Castelli Gallery in Gainsville Georgia, the 2019 Jerusalem Biennial, and MOAH Museum in Lancaster, CA. Recent shows include the Mike Kelley Gallery, George Billis Gallery, Noysky Projects, Sturt Haaga Gallery, Jill Joy Gallery, SOLA Gallery, and Open Mind Space in Los Angeles. Her work is included in several private collections in the Bay Area, New York City, China, and Los Angeles.
“I interpret our world through the lens of science and art to shed light on the relationship between the environment and human nature. I work with a hybrid form of painting, photography and mixed media, synthesizing my aesthetic sensibilities with an interest in the natural cycles of the earth.
My process often begins with hand painted transparent surfaces scratched and marked with abstracted gestures. Using the illumination of the scanning machine as an original light source, I combine painted backgrounds with collected objects from the natural world and reclaimed photo-based imagery.
My current work comprises images of minerals and the body in transformation. Using seedpods, salt crystallization and mica as metaphors for metamorphosis, I create organic interpretations of nature that are in a process of transmutation.
I often use the space images made available through the NASA Global Climate Change website, and integrate them with the scans of seeds, minerals and the body, to emphasize the damage humans have caused. My newest work refers to the imminence of these dangers and the possibilities of change.
Blending and recombining genres from contemporary and ancient cultures, I apply a sensuous aesthetic to the tools of photography and painting. I look for a luminous language where spirit and material can work together to form a new identity and perception of self.”
– Aline Mare
alinemare.com
instagram.com/alinelillie
On display for one week beginning 2.12.21
Helms Design Center at 8745 Washington Boulevard
All artwork is copyrighted work of the artist. All rights reserved. Images not to be used without permission.
