We Are Just Passing Through 2019

Curator: Mark Maggiori’s 2019 painting, "We Are Just Passing Through," captures a distinctly contemporary take on classic Western imagery. Oil on canvas, it shows two cowboys on horseback overlooking a vast canyon. What's your initial impression? Editor: There's a melancholic beauty here. The sweeping landscape, rendered in these fiery oranges, feels both majestic and indifferent. The cowboys almost seem dwarfed by the scale of the environment, figures briefly gracing a timeless space. Curator: That tension between the human and the landscape is key. Maggiori often plays with established visual tropes of the American West. Think of how cinema shaped our perception of cowboys and landscapes. But here, it's less about glorification, perhaps more about quiet observation. What are the social implications? Editor: The title itself, "We Are Just Passing Through," highlights the ephemeral nature of human presence and ownership. It questions narratives of conquest and settlement that have historically dominated the region. The figures of the cowboys now are transient, as if facing both the sublime grandeur and the unsettling knowledge of historical erasure. There's an implicit commentary on land rights and the environment. Curator: Indeed. Consider how the cowboys themselves are depicted. One, more clearly visible, seems contemplative rather than heroic. Their stillness suggests a connection, but also distance, from the land. It really evokes how museums construct the American identity and, to that point, these visual languages as well. Editor: The subtle modernism also creates a space for critical reflection. Whose West are we seeing? The artist omits violent or overly romanticized scenes, nudging us to grapple with a layered history of expansionism, conflict, and ecological consequences. The ruggedness, in short, remains. Curator: It seems like the artist wants us to consider who shapes that history, what voices are privileged, and which perspectives remain unheard in this landscape, that simultaneously offers a striking statement about its lasting geological legacy. Editor: Exactly, even a genre like this should have contemporary, historical meaning, offering space for new understandings and narratives of belonging and dispossession in that mythologized land, as the artwork offers us the space for such reflection.