exhibitions
J.W. Mahoney: Carceral
April 28 – May 19, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28, 6 - 8pm
Curator's Office is pleased to present the third solo exhibition of artist, curator and writer, J.W. Mahoney. Long a singular and influential presence on the greater Washington, DC art scene, this new meditative body of image/text works on paper over panel is inspired by a recent dark and existential episode in the artist's life: that of a brief imprisonment after an arrest.
view exhibition
about Carceral
The works evoke conditions of imprisonment, both physically and philosophically. Yet their lyricism belies the liberating flight within. Some are “portraits” of fellow inmates. Others are mood pieces from being in the cell or looking out from it. The exhibition has a soundtrack of prison-themed music including songs by Johnny Cash, Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Bobby Fuller, and Bruce Springsteen.
Mahoney writes, "There are experiences that we humans sometimes have no control in - good ones, like love, and not so good ones, like surgery. Or incarceration. All the titles of the pieces here I wrote on paper the third day (of four) that I was in jail in Arlington, Virginia in the summer of 2011, not unjustifiably, after a DWI conviction. Paper was scarce, and the pen a surprising grace.
These "Carceral" pieces are semi-successful escape attempts, in a way, out of those conditions. Incarceration can't be reconciled with, because it's so objective - you're locked in, up, and down. The fancy that awareness is "free" has to be registered as an abstract freedom, which it really is. I made myself remember the Tolle quote, above, when I was in my first holding-cell, right after conviction, newly belt-less and temporarily shoeless. It worked, mostly.
Incarceration is cruel and unusual punishment as far as I can see, for anybody who’s not really dangerous to us all. It generally feels to be a massively deep waste of time. This was a meditation retreat enforced by locks and weapons. These artworks came from that, and hopefully out of it - as visions from a restless third eye (as it exists), while the other two are generally seeing the six walls of one's rectangular living space. These works are not about either catharsis or healing. Nothing can extirpate the experience of incarceration, nor are childbirth or combat ever really knowable except as personal experiences. But all may be doorways into the formless."
J.W. Mahoney is an artist, writer, and curator based in Virginia. A graduate of Harvard University, he has exhibited his work in the United States for over 30 years. Additionally, he is an active independent curator who constantly encourages younger artists and assembles new and unusual contexts for their works. He writes for numerous publications, including Art in America, ArtNews, and Art Papers. He is an educator at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Mahoney is known and admired for his visionary mind and unusual eye and has had a tremendous influence on the cultural life of Washington, DC and its environs. His works are in the public collections of The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, St. Louis, MO; and The Artery Collection, Bethesda, MD.
image above: Xiara XIV, digital print on Japanese paper mounted onto wood, colored pencil, 12" x 12", 2012