Charles Mason | Putting things together
We have all fantasized about time travel. Never mind the future (where friends would be old and dying), wouldn't it be marvelous to go back, to begin again and do things differently this time; to avoid the same mistakes and make things better.
Untitled (grotto)
Imaginatively it is possible to temporarily locate oneself in different times and people often seek refuge from everyday terrors and turmoils by doing just that. All of us inevitably live in some very near past anyway, because it is impossible to exist in the future. Nostalgia is a very bad thing of course,and we should not spend too much time yearning lest we become depressed by forgetting to attend to the present. Despite this, experts of the alternative holistic tendency encourage us to meditate on past joys in order to re-experience happy events and somehow wrench that cheerful state of mind into the here and now.
The title for this exhibition suggests a new beginning and with it heroism and hope. Also implied is a kind of bitter failure, a false start which has led nowhere and therefore been abandoned.
Loss is involved, but there is no going back, so lets start again. This is a healing act in part, like mourning, but psycho pathologists tell us that the abiding tendency of bereaved or abandoned people is to avoid confronting their loss. Instead, they cherish it by refusing change and take the few relics that remain and subject them to endless emotional ransacking as a continuation of their own withdrawal from relationships that matter or might help. According to Freud, the reparatory aspect of mourning depends on being creative, giving life to new ideas; starting over.
Sometimes, particular objects - of little worth in themselves, but specific to an individual - become things of comfort, contributing a surplus of significance with their reference to absence and grief. Often broken or partial things, these relics exist in isolation as mementos. They stand in for someone, as a reminder of their presence, to be loved and cared for.
Some of Charles Mason's sculptures utilize broken, partially repaired and re-configured 'found objects'. Everyday fragments of chairs, wheelbarrows, drawers and boxes are taken out of their usual or expected context and are added to or combined with variously sympathetic materials. Other works take on the appearance of familiar objects that have been re-made.
untitled ( picnic-table )
"Untitled (picnic table)" is shocking because recognition and surprise occur simultaneously and immediately. It is clearly and dumbly what its title suggests, but it comes in kit form, fabricated out of common scaffolding rods and steel clamps, to be dismantled should the need arise. An image of muscly young workmen, stripped to the waist and sweating is quickly replaced by memories of awkward summer afternoons with family members, knee to knee and
much too close for comfort. Whoever invented this type of picnic table did so with the best intentions, but any idea of relaxed al fresco luncheon is quashed. Awkward physical acts of clambering on and out of fixed seats is matched by the sheer embarrassment of having to make small talk whilst performing pseudo-sexual acts face to face with your sister, like stuffing cream scones and slurping warm tea.
Another steel rod sculpture, "Untitled (lead)" is extended at its base by the addition of a wheelbarrow frame. Notions of transportation are clear and there is a small joke: take the wheels off the barrow, but then attach it to a frame so that it can be carried.
Untitled (lead)
The point of making the conveyance so difficult is probably to do with making friends and developing partnerships and encouraging mutual decisions such as who will lead and which way to go. If this piece suggests anxieties around loneliness, commitment and moving on, it also addresses trust. To reinforce the idea that we rely on others for our well-being, a sound track has been provided: a recording of a song, horribly familiar to many, emanates from the tubing. It is both camp and tragic, funny and sad, with a full brass-section backing and interspersed with whistling-along and the sounds of sawing - presumably the artist at work. After hearing the chorus line, "Did you think I would leave you dying" for the umpteenth time, one can only wish he would.
Two more sculptures made from wheelbarrow parts each contain a body of sorts. The linear forms of "Untitled (kit)" and "Untitled (kit1)" carry what appears to be thick fabric, rolled tightly and pushed into the tubular arms. Here is the means of moving from one place to another and a blanket to unfurl on arrival. Temporarily parked, this is the paraphernalia of the homeless tramp, or maybe the adventure of a two week camping holiday - all crumpled maps and blisters. The rolls are in fact hard and made through a casting process, then covered and softened by a skin of paper tape which serves as a disguise and prevents any urge to unroll them.
Untitled (Kit 1)
Mason seems obsessed with putting things together and taking them apart. All the sculptures look as if they need to be unrolled, unfastened, or re-assembled in order to make them function. The answer to the ubiquitous art-world question, "Does it work?" has a proviso, which insists on the audience making an imaginative leap. Given the means, or at least the kit to do something, we are charged with adding our own narratives to these isolated, patched and propped up puzzles.
The artist laboured long and hard to make a cardboard cave, guided by a reproduction of a Lorenzo Monaco painting featuring Saint Jerome in the wilderness peering out from a rock cave with a puzzled expression. The idea of making a cave is odd in itself.
The decision to take it apart again and present it like an IKEA self-assembly product seems generous - if not a little perverse. Helpfully, a photograph of the assembled cave accompanies the flat-pack and the foam protection is there ready to line the edges of the entrance. "Cave (flat-pack)" is a comment on homelessness, and on middle-class values which lie somewhere between DIY and off-the-peg consumerism. Children build dens, which become homes to act out their fantasies in preparing their relationship to the world. So it is also a game where the outcome is certain, but it is the playing that counts.
untitled (stool)
Made with extreme care and conviction, Mason's art is replete with psychological implications, open to interpretation and narrative, but resisting imaginative closure. There is a concern with everyday dreams and fears and with people as receptive and vulnerable beings. The sculptures are like actors, each playing their part, but like all good actors they are only really playing themselves.
Roy Voss