My assemblages juxtapose undercurrents of my baroque fascination with the Macrocosmi Fabrica - the vast and intricate latticework of existence.

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​Time, myth, and personal history, collide and unfold over themselves in this hallucinatory present we inhabit.

​​My studio is a cross between an alchemical laboratory and a cabinet of curiosities. Stacked within it I have collected celestial engravings, apotropaic talismans, vinyl disks, memento mori - and the esoterica of vanished cultures - not as static artifacts, but as catalytic ingredients. Drafted into my process their forms press against each other, dissolve into one another, seeking new configurations, perhaps ones they had always longed for...

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Self-portraits and personal treasures - scavenged from flea markets, pried from the hands of antiquarians, or captured during my photographic wanderings through cultural capitals - do not sit idly. Their latent energies itch to become something else, something that eludes definition, yet insists on being seen.

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Each layered tableaux is created in an ongoing dance of transfiguration, often evolving over years. Elements are staged, juxtaposed - layered, painted, collaged, effaced, photographed, printed, then digitally layered again - until (hopefully) the work escapes it's origins, defying gravity, vibrating with frequencies in which the sacred absolves the profane, the antique copulates with the modern.

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Mine isn't a sober, orderly vision - the work is a brew of cosmic and artistic intoxication. Each piece is a reflection of other worlds discovered in the crucible of the eternal present.

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James Mansour