Artist and documentarian Heidi Mraz is featuring some true automotive icons in a new "experiential" collection called Driven to Abstraction, which depicts cars such as Porsche 917 and Lamborghini Countach "at the threshold of recognition".
When viewed at close range, her work appears as colourful geometric abstractions, but from a distance or through a convex rearview mirror an optical illusion occurs and a portrait of a car is revealed.
"Visually speaking, up close our brains have a blind spot," says Mraz. "I use this phenomenon in my art to mask the subject car using colour and edges to distort perception.
"The magic happens when the viewer experiences 'sudden perception' of seeing a car hidden in the composition. The key to unlocking the image of the car is distance, whether by stepping far enough back or viewing a shrunken version of the art in a convex rearview mirror, the painting transforms before your eyes inviting the viewer to reflect on the automobile as an artform.”
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Driven to Abstraction features in Miami's Motorcar Cavalcade event from January 15; the Porsche 917 piece will be offered as a silent auction, with proceeds going to the American Cancer Society.
Other featured cars include the Porsche 911, Ferrari F40, LaFerrari, BMW 328, and two Bugattis: the Type 35 and Chiron.
Mraz is also well-known for her Petal to the Metal collection, which "conceptually reimagines automotive art, cultivating the idea that beauty can be found in both nature and machines".
All pieces are handcrafted with the semblance of exotic flowers out of layered paper cut from car magazines and her own images, then "rooted" to a bed of brushed aluminium sheet metal.
The "power plants" are styled as a vintage floral print. Botanical descriptions are replaced with car statistics and black line drawings are made of the featured vehicles rather than flowers. The series includes eight unique supercar designs ranging from Koenigsegg to Bugatti.
