Facing Forward by Kevin Mastro (2021-present)
Kevin Mastro is a neuroscientist that has found solace, hope and more than he could have ever imagined in producing art. Kevin’s scientific and artistic ideology centers on a fundamental part of neuroscience, a dogma: our reality is a combination of our ability to first sense the world and then how we perceive it, which means that our realities are not all the same. This may sound trivial but at its core, it contains an immovable beauty related to our existence. Our perception is our reality, and our perception is a complex interplay of our past, present, and future selves.
During Kevin’s scientific journey, he has actively sought to uncover the neural underpinnings of our perceptional realities. In his doctorate degree (2012-2017), Kevin explored how the brain can start and stop the actions that shape our world. In doing so, his work uncovered a new therapeutic approach to treating Parkinson’s disease which, at its core, is the inability to start or stop actions. As a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School (2017-prersent), Kevin seeks to understand how risks and rewards shape our precept and contribute the way in which we move through our world.
As an artist, Kevin recognizes that while our realities may be different, there is so much shared in our human experience. His work asks the viewer to sit for a while and consider moments that have change you. Utilizing a mixed media approach, Kevin challenges our perceptual framework to allow the viewer to see whatever they may want. Kevin’s long-term artistic goal is to build art that reveals the complexity of emotions, memories and those precepts that ultimately guide the way we move through the world.
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