Mario zoots

The lure of images lies at the heart of the studio work I do. Using classic film stills, vintage postcards, found family photographs with a mix of my own photography, I attempt to make collages and photomontages that are nostalgic yet also uncanny and absurd. By adjusting, inverting, and slicing separate pictures together to create new works of art, I am exploring the subversive force of found images. My fine art practice centers on appropriation and collage. Collage inherently involves nothing less than altering existence. By borrowing found imagery, I make changes both hand-made and (occasionally) digital to alter the perception of the everyday, and continue the found image’s evolution towards new definitions. My latest body of works have been the dissecting of vintage oversized magazines from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. I’ve titled these works “Excavations”. Page by page I carve into the magazines and attempt to reveal the hidden light between pages of eternal darkness.

I received my BFA from Metropolitan State University and my MA from the University of Denver. My work has been exhibited domestically in Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Miami as well as internationally in Sao Paulo, Berlin, Zurich and Athens. I was featured in Gestalten’s recent The Age of Collage: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art, the definitive investigation into how collage has become one the most vital forms of current visual expression.