Math Bass: a picture stuck in the mirror: Henry Art Gallery, Seattle

Los Angeles-based artist Math Bass (b. 1981, New York, NY) will create a site-specific installation featuring a series of recent oil paintings (a new medium for the artist), a kinetic wall work, sculpture, and large-scale wall applications. Since their initial work as a performance and video artist, the tracking of the body’s motion through the world has become central to Math’s painting and sculptural practice. The intersection of dramatically varied scale throughout the installation becomes important as well. Drawing attention to a spectator’s progress and their relationship to each object and location in the space, Bass brings forth the ideas of being shepherded by, barred from, projecting through, and resisting space. 

 

Bass has referred to their work as "props," foregrounding the performative interplay among art, artist, and viewer inherent to their installations. During their site visit, Bass responded to the theatrical potential and multiple perspectives of the East Gallery. These characteristics particularly shaped the kinetic sculpture, which suggests continual presence and the motion of bodies behind a curtain without ever revealing them, a preparation for performative presence endlessly held in suspense. In addition to the in-gallery components, the project will extend to the Henry’s exterior, occupying the external wall of the museum with an expansive mural “painting” in vinyl.

 

Math Bass: a picture stuck in the mirror is held in conjunction with the Feminist Art Coalition (FAC), a nationwide initiative of art projects that seek to generate cultural awareness of feminist thought, experience, and action.

A brochure with a curator’s introduction and installation images will accompany the exhibition.