#mark masterson

First Appearance:

Mark Masterson pulled off his hat. His blond hair underneath was shorn almost into a crew cut, and his goatee was neatly trimmed. He gave Zane a hug and then stepped back, blue eyes shining.

This article was originally published by A+C Magazine Houston (Now Arts + Culture Texas)  for November 2011, and can be found here.

This exhibition ran at Spacetaker's Artist Resource Center from October 1-28, 2011.

Mark Masterson brings an exhibition to Spacetaker’s ARC steeped in 16th century style, but the egalitarian subject matter is both timeless and timely.

Working in the style of 16th century Flemish painter and printmaker Pieter Bruegel, Masterson editorializes and reworks Bruegel’s satirical compositions to create a unique voice that rallies against opulence and greed.

In 2009, long before Occupy Wall Street and satellite movements, Masterson quietly created a triptych that details the division between the (haves) and the (have-nots). The center panel “The Battle of the Strong-Boxes and Money Bags” is economic warfare incarnate; anthropomorphic treasure boxes and money bags are tangled in a war scene with their gold pieces spilling across the battleground. This is the starting point for an exhibition exploring themes including the healthcare crisis and housing market crash.

The majority of the exhibition is oil painting on folded and crinkled linen paper, which adds a sculptural quality that looks akin to a fresco rediscovered or a specimen recently exhumed. Valleys and ridges on the surface invite the viewer to examine the image from multiple vantage points. However, this uneven surface forces a break from Bruegel’s style, resulting in more generalized anatomy and gestural brush strokes. Masterson further emphasizes physicality in his images by leaving the edges of the paper exposed.

Masterson includes three lithographs in the exhibition, which allow the eye to rest and enjoy more subtle drawing and use of chine colle.

All of the lithographs were editioned with the assistance of his twin brother, Pat Masterson, at Burning Bones Press. In “The Big Fish Eat the Lil Fish,” the concept of the corporate ladder moves to higher levels of absurdity with peasants cutting house-sized fish open, allowing smaller fish to spill out from the incision. Masterson includes literal ladders that climb to surreal and indeterminate heights, and embellishes the quantity of fish in the landscape.

While one might consider “Under Repair” to be academic, or an artifact of an institution out of touch with today’s problems, the exhibition commands the older visual language to convey a message of once-quiet vitriol.

— GEOFF SMITH