{"id":32839,"date":"2016-03-24T09:49:35","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T15:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=32839"},"modified":"2018-10-09T13:27:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T19:27:20","slug":"the-remains-of-lost-time-laura-hope-masons-extinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-remains-of-lost-time-laura-hope-masons-extinct\/","title":{"rendered":"The Remains of Lost Time: Laura Hope Mason\u2019s Extinct"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The sister fields of archaeology and paleontology share the near-impossible aim of putting eons of earth\u2019s time into human perspective. The movement and scale of time are notoriously difficult for people to understand, but facing the physical remnants of plants, animals, and early humans brings millions of years into a more relatable focus. Laura Hope Mason\u2019s mixed-media paintings in her solo show Extinct <\/em>respond to forms and textures in fossils, stone, and artifacts found at the Natural History Museum of Utah. The title of the show and its description focus on impermanence and destruction, but the works within it also convey the perpetuity of natural processes. The show lets the audience wonder whether these paintings show dinosaur, human, or even modern animal remains. Each viewer can develop their own theories about whether these are the bones of a shrew or an Allosaurus, the veins of a leaf or canyons viewed from above. This ambiguity removes any morbidity and leaves an open field for viewers\u2019 imaginations. Mason\u2019s work shows the fragmentary way we perceive and understand the large scale of time and our fleeting existence within it, as well as the material harmony of all things that eventually reunite in the earth.<\/p>\n

The compositions in Extinct <\/em>play with scale and focus in ways that coax viewers into closer inspection and are reminiscent of gridded field sites. Each of the paintings has an indeterminate scale: \u201cRemains\u201d or \u201cLayers\u201d could be images in a microscope or views from a satellite, abstract shapes and lines belonging to nature at a macro or micro level. The cropping of the images also adds to this ambiguous scale. The show has series of smaller pieces arranged in larger grids: they relate to each other in a fractal way and reflect how archaeologists and paleontologists map the spaces they study.<\/p>\n