I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman. Alan Moore

The artist Alexandra Marati strives to explore ‘wildernesses of unknown dimensions, often affected by extreme weather conditions in spiritual flux’. Using sprays and acrylics for the sandy or sticky veneer they provide, she creates ‘multiple levels of shifting sand that are both transient and permanent. Her work is a visual-spatial repository depicting aura-tinted flying objects, spectral forms or geometric shapes. Here and there, sudden voids intensify the sense of loss or impending doom … Oddly built structures lend artistic form to archetypal visions generated by the unconscious or are inspired by elements from nature itself. The unknown of the outer world is linked to the inner unknown, challenging viewers to come along on this journey under their own … steam’.

Through cryptographic works that constitute personal labyrinths, the artist expresses her commitment to playfulness, to exploration as an intellectual challenge, essentially transforming painting into an installation with a spatio-temporal dimension and quantal references. Exploration becomes an investigative journey, and acquires a diagnostic/psychoanalytical scope, helping to capture that which escapes the conscious mind yet emerges through the therapeutic function of art. A worthy protégé of her mentor Alan Moore, Alexandra Marati proves, through her new work, that art is truly magic and that magic is ultimately art.