“Sylvia Plimack Mangold Explores Trompe L’œil by Turning the Technique Inside Out”
# Sylvia Plimack Mangold: The Artistic Alchemy of Tape, Fields, and Trees
Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s artistic journey is a testament to the transformative power of observation, materiality, and an unflinching engagement with the passage of time. Her recent exhibition, *Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Tapes, Fields, and Trees, 1975–84*, at Craig Starr Gallery in Manhattan, shines a spotlight on a decade of her career that elegantly bridges literal materialism with infinite metaphysical questions. Through her detailed renderings of masking tape, tabletops, trees, and skies, Mangold not only dissolves the boundary between reality and representation but also invites the viewer into a meditative conversation with time, art, and mortality.
## Painting as an Expansion, Not a Dead End
Amidst the collective anxiety of the art world in the mid-20th century — wherein significant voices argued that painting had reached an inevitable dead end in the context of abstraction, Minimalism, and conceptual art — Mangold’s work emerged as a quiet yet profound rejoinder. Fully embracing a love of material, surfaces, and meticulous representation, she acknowledged that painting could still evolve, reinvent itself, and find purpose in direct observation of the world.
Critics have often compared her early works to the Minimalist attitude, particularly for their focus on overlooked details like floorboards or masking tape. However, Mangold’s vision diverges sharply from the austere, self-referential ethos of Minimalism; her work is steeped in humanity, labor, and what critic John Yau refers to as “plain and direct making.” Through her painterly lens, even the act of painting masking tape — a seemingly mundane object — becomes both a feat of craftsmanship and a profound engagement with the act of seeing.
## The Trompe L’Oeil Inside-Out: Paint as Process and Revelation
A centerpiece of Mangold’s early works within the exhibition is her exploration of masking tape. In works like *Untitled* (1975) and *Paint the Tape, Paint the Paper, Paint the Tape* (March 1975), Mangold rigorously re-creates masking tape, sheets of paper, and plywood tabletops through layers of paint. Her hyperrealistic approach recalls trompe l’oeil (which aims to “trick the eye”), but Mangold subverts the genre’s goal of deception. Instead of hiding the process of creation, she foregrounds it — leaving edges and gestures visible, so the viewer can appreciate not just what is depicted but how it is achieved.
In *Paint the Tape, Paint the Paper, Paint the Tape,* Mangold presents a torn page from a lined spiral notebook, meticulously painted in white acrylic and “held” in place with masking tape. The title, scrawled on the surface as if penciled in by the artist, reflects a simple set of instructions — a contract of creativity between Mangold and the medium. This interaction between planning, process, and finality underscores her fascination with beginnings, craft, and ephemeral specificity.
## From Interiors to Infinite Skies and Trees
As the exhibition progresses, Mangold’s gaze shifts from the structured confines of interiors to the expansive outdoors. Her rich, observational canvases capture a nuanced dance between light, shadow, and weather across rural New York landscapes. Works such as *Untitled* (May 1983) and *A September Passage* (1984) replicate the fleeting glow of evening skies, as clouds and amber tones spill over masked boundaries of paper or canvas. By doing so, Mangold bridges the interior world of the artist with the ever-moving world beyond her studio, capturing the constant cycle of life and decay.
These works highlight the intimacy with which Mangold approaches her subjects. Like a window frame or a camera lens, her painted tape both separates and connects; while the edges demarcate a visual boundary, her brush strokes spill over, symbolizing the inability to contain time and light within fixed margins. Her clouds and trees remind us, in the words of poet John Ashbery, of “slowly unfolding expansiveness.” Mangold’s art does not seek to arrest the flow of time but instead honors its inevitability, celebrating the act of simply bearing witness.
## Mortality and Materiality: Art as Presence
Underlying Mangold’s works is a quiet, persistent awareness of mortality. In her paintings, elements like a blank sheet of paper or a distant horizon evoke simultaneity — they are at once concrete and ephemeral. The viewer may interpret the sheet of paper in *Untitled* (1975) as a tabula rasa, a perpetual “beginning” that is paradoxically set against the conditions of impermanence. Similarly, her tree studies embrace seasonal change, light, and shadow, as if acknowledging that no matter how carefully observed, time and nature are forever fluid.
What separates Mangold from many of her