Over the years, Mark Van Wagner has collected natural and pigmented sands from around the world, incorporating this substance into his layered-relief abstractions. In the exploration of applying mixed-media/assemblage into his artwork, he has recognized sand to be the most literal medium to capture material decomposition - its essence defining impermanence related to place and gross matter. Thick and thin spontaneous-gestural applications of glue adhesives and primers are sprinkled with innumerable sand particles and flotsam that simultaneously mimic a pointilist-pixelationist approach. The reassembling of sand back into subject 'matter' allows for playful micro and macro ocular excavations.

In combining movement with stillness, his pictures reference and combine various geometric-architectonic components, signage, biomorphic-galactic collisions, wave infused monolithic monitors, webs, various investigations of the inner and outer landscape and often the inexplicable.

Pictured on the left is the artist's studio - Bellport, Long Island