“There was a moment when I was walking between forests and mountains in Tepoztlán, Mexico, while dandelions floated across my face,” Alexis Mata says. “In that instant, I experienced a strange sensation, as if I were standing on another planet, in another time, confronted with an entirely new landscape.”

As the dainty seeds drifted through the air, Mata began to think about the ways life forms travel and embed themselves in new ecosystems. He was drawn to the idea of landing, of rooting and growing, which quickly became the basis for a poetic exhibition at Thinkspace in Los Angeles.

Titled Lost Landing, the show features Mata’s glitched landscapes in which familiar terrain appears otherworldly. Plants, skies, and stones slide into a sort of visual glissando, overlapping and converging in abstracted forms. “Landing functions as a metaphor for discovery, but also for reconnecting with the creative impulse and with the capacity for wonder,” the artist adds.

Dandelions gone to seed appear in several works, alongside cacti of various sizes and shapes. Thriving succulents that can live for centuries are contrasted with the dying flowers, collapsing time in an already surreal and fantastical geographic plane.

The exhibition “ultimately proposes a space where forms seem to mutate, drift, and slowly colonize their surroundings,” the artist says. “Each piece functions as the trace of an unknown landscape, a fragment of an expanding world where ideas disperse, float, and find new ways to grow.”

Lost Landing is on view through June 27. Explore more of Mata’s works on Instagram.

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