The impetus for Mazal’s series, Silence in Prague, was a trip to the Czech Republic and a visit to the Old Jewish Cemetery, one of the longest surviving Jewish burial grounds in the world. The historic site – which dates from the mid 1400s to the late eighteenth century and is the resting ground for thousands of the local Jewish community – had a profound effect on the artist and he chronicled the experience, as he always does, through photography.
As he edited the images, digitally manipulating them until the tableaux of ancient headstones was entirely abstracted, Mazal realized his next body of work was materializing before his eyes. In the Silence in Prague paintings, Mazal combines techniques and visual elements he has been developing for years. The result are angular forms charged with energy, color and texture.
