Name: Mira Burack
Born: Boston, MA
Lives and works: Cerrillos, NM
Website: matterology.com
Instagram: @matterology
Mira Burack’s artwork is a space of rest, contemplation, and the contemplation of rest. Her wall-sized collages of photos of rumpled bedclothes enlarge the space where sleep takes place and, in doing so, enlarge a viewer’s attention to sleep and its landscape. With a deliberate geometric arrangement of images of fabric, flowers, and color, Burack brings a clarity of purpose and shape to the sensual and the unconscious. “The liminal resting body acts as a portal or mirror into an intermediary state; this is a fluid place, characterized by the innate sensual movement of cloth,” writes the artist. “The bed is a rich, contemplative site to consider materials, relationships, and our experience of rest in a swiftly paced twenty-first century.”
Her photo collages and installations are soft, monochromatic, and in a muted color palette, with occasional striking moments of bright, saturated contrast. The combination of washed out neutrals with bold yellows mimics the color landscape of high desert northern New Mexico, the shock of a blooming chamisa against brown earth. Layered photos of piles of fabric cover the wall, while leaves, feathers, and other objects taken from the natural world entwine with a sublime domesticity.
Burack lives in the Ortiz Mountains of New Mexico. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy and a BA in studio art and psychology from Pepperdine University. Burack was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up on the coast of Maine. Her solo exhibition Sleeping between the Sun and the Moon will be in view at 516 Arts in Albuquerque June 22-August 31, 2019.
