Mazes Of The Earth is a blog about Marc Pena, who creates postmodern art. Postmodern art is often an interesting combination of modern and traditional. It is not the same thing as modern art, which is usually just boring old stuff that’s been around for a while and someone decided to call modern. The most important thing about art made by Marc Pena is that it involves painting.
Tina Fey won an Emmy for writing and playing the lead in 30 Rock. She also appeared in Date Night and Megamind. She was in Mean Girls, Baby Mama, and Sisters as well. She has a new movie coming out called Sisters that she wrote, produced, and stars in. In this one she plays sisters who get trapped inside their childhood home together for five days during a blizzard without their husbands or children.
Many people think that Tina Fey was born on April 30, 1970 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. But according to her biography at Biography.com she was actually born on May 18, 1970 in Upper Darby Township to parents Donald Henry Fey and Jeanne Marguerite Pizzi.
Her birthday is May 18th 1970 at 6:23 pm in Upper Darby Township Pennsylvania United States Of America. Her astrological sign
http://www.mazesoftheearth.com/
http://www.marcpena.com/
http://www.marcpena.com/exhibitions/2008-2009-california-exhibition/
Marc Pena is a painter who paints complex, hyperrealistic paintings of tiny scenes viewed through portholes and windows in a variety of different settings that change from work to work, but always seem to involve some sort of maze or labyrinth, often with an object in the foreground that is either unidentifiable or looks like it belongs in an alien landscape or an underwater environment. Although sometimes the background seems to suggest a cityscape, there are no human figures to be seen in any of these pieces, which I find strangely compelling. I find myself wanting to see what the people in the paintings look like, and at the same time hoping that they never show up, because I don’t want these worlds to be populated by humans–I want them to be alien places where I am merely allowed to visit as an observer and never as a participant. There’s something incredibly sad about all of these paintings, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is; maybe it has something to do with being trapped inside endless m
I have been asked several times what I think of the work of Marc Pena and his brand of postmodern art. I have recently decided to respond by creating this blog dedicated to the work of Marc Pena and the other artists that he has influenced.
My goal is not to promote his work, but rather present it for what it is and what it does. To me, Pena’s work is about a maze or puzzle of a different sort. It is a maze that he creates in order to explore his own thoughts, sensations and perceptions about life. He then presents us with this creation as if we are already lost in this maze. The only hope we have of finding our way out is by studying his map through the maze in hopes that we may be able to find our way out as well. At least that’s how I see it.
Maze Art is a term coined by the artist Marc Pena to describe his artistic practice. A Maze is an art piece that takes the form of an architectural space, like a gallery or museum, a house or garden. The maze always has one path that leads from the entrance to the center, which is the “goal”, whatever it might be.
Here are some examples of his mazes:
A Maze no bigger than your living room, with plenty of “wrong turns”:
The Maze of Happiness:
The Maze of Seduction:
A Maze where you need to walk on your hands:
A Maze for children:
Why so many mazes? Because he’s been asked that question several times already. Why so little? Because he’d rather not talk about it at all.
Pena says that his mazes do not have specific meanings. Instead they are expressions of his day-to-day life experiences. He calls this work Para-Art because it explores concepts such as Art and Reality, but also what goes beyond them; or it could be said that it dissolves Art into Reality or Reality into Art. This kind of work has been going on since the beginning of time until now; when Pena was born was only one
Pena’s labyrinth is a maze on a scale unimaginable in its time, but it is also not quite enough. It isn’t a labyrinth in the sense of an unsolvable puzzle, but it is a maze that you can’t get out of. The piece seems to embody an inexhaustible but fundamentally pointless pursuit of the truth. Like the alchemists, which Pena uses as his symbol for himself, Pena has dedicated his life to seeking something he will never find.
Trying to solve the maze and failing comments on art as a vain pursuit, but it also comments on life. The piece is designed so that you will fail in your quest, but if you take away nothing else from this piece, I hope you take away this: failure is not necessary. You can choose to look at this maze and laugh at Marc Pena for designing something he couldn’t get out of (if I had done this I would have complained about how much time he spent designing it) or you can instead choose to look at the maze and laugh at yourself for thinking that maybe you could beat him.
So go ahead and try to escape; there is no way out anyway.
The work of Marc Pena (b. 1954) has been produced during the last thirty years, although it seems that the works he is most famous for were produced in the late 80s and early 90s. His work is however still very much alive as he continues to produce new pieces while showing at galleries across the world.
Penas work is mostly concerned with space and time, and the viewer’s relationship to these things. In his early works he used paper cutouts to create a sense of endless space in a small space, but it was in his later works where he began to explore time in relation to the space through which we move, that he made a name for himself.
At its core Penas work recalls Marcel Duchamps “Nude Descending A Staircase” which shocked viewers when first exhibited at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. Like Duchamps piece, Penas maze like spaces seem to loop back on themselves, or slowly unravel before your eyes.
In this way, like Duchamps piece Pena’s work reminds us that we are not really in control of our own experience of time, that our perception of past events is dependent on the present moment, an important idea in Post-Modern philosophy and art theory
In the section titled “Drawings” of his website, there is a series of illustrations entitled “The Maze”, created by Marc Pena. These drawings are supposed to be visual representations of the many ways in which life can be considered a maze of chaos and confusion.
The first picture in the series displays a man standing in front of what looks like a door. In front of him is a large open path, with the words “You Decide” written above it. Behind him, behind what seems to be the same door, there is another path, also open. This second path however contains numerous obstacles that lie ahead of the man should he decide to take that path. The words written on this second path are “You Chose Wrong”.
1.Another drawing shows two paths, one leading straight up an incline and the other leading straight down it. Both paths have numerous obstacles in them as well as two doors at the top and bottom respectively. The drawing’s title states “Life Is Like A Mountain… You Have To Climb It”.
2.Another drawing shows a man standing next to a fork