Mason Eubanks
Images / CV / Publications
Statement
I
saw an exhibition a few years back at the American Visionary
Art Museum in Baltimore that featured works by artists that
had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. These were folks that
had already been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and then had
found art as a way to help them manage their psychological
uniqueness—not vice versa. I was surprised to find how
prevalent the use of repetition was throughout these works.
There was a huge canvas filled with small, haunting little
figures and there was a quilt embroidered with layers and
layers of words and sentences that described the voices one
artist heard. But, for the most part, the works were not necessarily
about the mental conditions of the artists who created them.
For example, there was an enormous replica of the Queen Mary
made out of toothpicks and glue (by an artists named Wayne
Kusy). So instead of using artwork to express their experiences
as schizophrenics, they were simply utilizing the act of doing
something over and over again as a way to find solace. It
obviously helped them to quiet an otherwise overwhelming barrage
of thoughts. The act of repetition helped them to bring clarity
in the midst of frequent confusion.
The monumentality
of many of these works seemed to be the result of sustaining
the process as long as possible, in turn maintaining a determined,
yet invigorating focus (that may have previously seemed impossible)
for weeks or even months.
So repetition is
reliability, it is dependability, but not necessarily predictability.
Repetition is an ideal complement to a monumental vision.
With repetition, the path to achieve a monumental vision is
premeditated. The work can be entered easily each day, and
sustained with rhythmic cadence. Somehow having a singular
vision that you have made up your mind to manifest, no matter
how long it will take, offers security and cohesion within
a life that may otherwise be full of emotional and psychological
strife.
My work, like the
work of the artists in that show, is about the effort to quiet
the mind and to find clarity through a process of long-sustained
patterns of recurring movements.
The painter Jean
Dubuffet was highly influenced by the art of schizophrenics
as well as other untrained artists. Today we call these artists
outsiders. Translated from French, Dubuffet branded the artwork
produced by these artists as “raw art” and defined
it as work that does not rely on cultural elements, academics
or art history for production or for understanding. This raw
art is always seems to be made by someone who is fully engaged
IN the moment and IN the process – often using art making
as a way to reach a certain state of mind. My work, too, is
largely born from process and lends itself to somewhat mesmerized
mental states. I often feel like a kid; a kid who is fascinated
by watching the foam swirl around in a tide pool at the beach,
or is laying in bed at night and staring up at a popcorn-crackle
ceiling while finding all kinds of faces and other images
embedded within the texture. It doesn’t take a lot of
outside influence to get me going and, within a practice that
is often quite hermetic, I seem to be able to go forever.
And for me, its
not necessarily what the work is about that is important,
it’s what the work does. What it does for me –
but also for those who come into contact with it –it
stimulates sensation, emotion and a sense of wonder.
Repetition is not used to create something stagnant. Rather
the work is intended to be alive; to contain an essence of
growth, and to be like its own microcosm - with rivers and
hills and valleys and critters and eruptions and growth. I
want it to be like looking under a rock or a fallen log and
finding an entire, hidden community of worms, bugs and other
critters.
In its animated
abstractness, the work lends its self to a broad array of
allusions… but the exciting part is that these allusions
waver, depending on the distance the work is experienced.
One experience occurs when you see the work wholly, from a
distance, and another experience occurs when you see the work
up close, at an intimate level. This seems simple, but this
particular experiential duality illuminates all sorts of real
and meaningful ideas, experiences and phenomena.
For example, in
thinking about the way my work is dually perceived, I often
think about the dichotomy between perceivable space and time
and the quantum world. Relative space and time, from a distance,
appear unified and cohesive while the quantum world, as it
is now being discovered at levels smaller than a quark, is
bumpy, chaotic and unpredictable. In the physicist Brian Green’s
book, Fabric of the Cosmos, there is a terrific illustration
that compares the observable universe to the quantum world.
The cosmic world is this nice, comfortable network of grids
where time and space is constant, easily measured and where
all the planets and everything else exist comfortably. But
when you look really, really close, Michael tole pricelist
subatomic levels, what you find is a jumble of irregular activity.
A bizarre universe of tiny, curled up dimensions. Like looking
at this work, it’s seeing cohesion when you stand back
and then being surprised to find something a bit unexpected
and strange when you stick your nose in it.
My work is also
very much inspired by topographies. Some weird and otherworldly,
like those of other planets or those found in the imagined
landscapes of authors like Dr. Seuss or filmmakers like Tim
Burton, and some familiar, like the wheat fields I knew growing
up in Eastern Oregon.
Wheat fields, in particular, also help to explain how the
dichotomy between the details and the whole form functions.
Combined with the use of repetition, dichotomy makes the work
about connectivity. In a wheat field, for example, you can
pick an individual stock and observe its color, the seeds,
and the grassy hairs. But at the same time you can look out
and see this endless, seamless golden blanket covering the
Earth. You are experiencing singularity and immense multiplicity
at the same time when you are in a wheat field. Simultaneous
experiences of the intimate and the tiny, and the grand and
infinite, such as this, make you suddenly lucid of the way
things are connected.
In contemporary science, many physicists now think that the
smallest particle, the particle that makes up and binds together
all matter, time and space, is a tiny, vibrating, one-dimensional
string. Some of the strings are straight and some are looped
and they vibrate with varying frequencies, but together they
create the vast mesh that is everything. I like to think of
each mark, or each individual unit, in my work like one of
these strings. They are small, elemental units that together,
with a network of other small, elemental units, connect to
create something greater.
Mason Eubanks,
October 2010
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