Kangal Dog - Aya Sofya - Istanbul I

*Text below excerpt from monograph text by Edward Lucie-Smith published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg 2008

Here the mirror sculptures are silhouettes of typical city dwellers, ranging in type from businessmen to skateboarders, who have been miraculously transported to wild locations. The figures can be seen, on the one hand, as the inhabitants of a lost Eden that now exists only inside their own heads, or on the other hand as beings who are pathetically ill-equipped and ill-prepared for this sudden return to nature. The Native and Mirrored series are directly photographic – that is to say, the mirror sculptures are placed in the chosen setting, and photographed in situ. Other, related series, make use of collage. Endangered Americans contrasts ghostly images of gas-guzzling American automobiles with drawings of endangered American plant species rendered in autobody paint.Lying behind both the Native images, and the images of the Mirrored series that are their antonym, lies a longing for an Edenic world that perhaps never truly existed in fact. I think it is part of the fascination of these works that they both preach a certain kind of morality, a morality of respect for nature, and at the same time question it. You can inhabit these scenes, but only as a ghost. The problems they pose are ultimately insoluble – there are no slick solutions to be found here.
Excerpt from catalogue text by Edward Lucie-Smith
for an exhibition at MK Contemporary UK 2008

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS AND PRESS 2008
Mirrored – Maslen & Mehra, monograph published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, Editor Caprice Horn 184 pages, hardback, full colour
Lettre International magazine, special edition, The Way We Live Now Pg 74 & Pg 246
Saatchi online, Critics Choice by Alix Rule, Published Feb 16
This Week in New York, Shadow Lands, Published Feb 6
The Guardian Guide UK, preview Maslen & Mehra/MK Contemporary Robert Clark, Jan 12

Mountain Lion - Subway - New York

3 images above:
Endangered Americans is the title of a series of composite works, which combine photographic collage and drawing. One half of the work is a photographic hand-cut collage, which integrates ghost-like images of big American cars into landscapes. The other half is a drawing of an endangered indigenous American plant rendered in metallic car paints. 67 x 32cm each