Literal smoke & mirrors

For the first time in his career, abstract painter Mauro Zamora is working with video in his latest show, “Anosognosia.” But the departure isn’t an altogether serious one. Zamora pointed the camera at a tiny mirrored space, lit incense below it, and allowed the smoke to rise into the frame. (Get it? Smoke and mirrors). It’s a rare lighthearted moment for a painter whose work typically reflects concerns about the destruction of our natural landscape.

“My work is about the choices we make about the land — the government making those choices and also corporations managing the land. The direct equation of that, for me, is always smoke and mirrors,” says Zamora. “It seems to me these people are always showing you one hand while they do something else with the other.”

But the main draw of Zamora’s work is always the paintings. He graduated in 2004 with an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts and has always leaned toward abstractions that present the natural landscape in conflict with the artificial glitz — or drab confines — of our contemporary lives.

“I’m interested in the landscape when it becomes politicized by government policy, war or neglect,” says Zamora. “It’s a dialogue between how we see the land, and decisions by other people that affect how we live on it.”