Charles Mason III USA, b. 1990
we look outside, we see (they look outside and don't see us), 2021
Oil stick, ink, pastel, paper
50 x 38 in
127 x 96.5 cm
127 x 96.5 cm
7991
Further images
This work by Charles Mason III debuted in the group show Surface is Only a Material Vehicle for Spirit at Kavi Gupta in 2021, which was guest curated by sculptor...
This work by Charles Mason III debuted in the group show Surface is Only a Material Vehicle for Spirit at Kavi Gupta in 2021, which was guest curated by sculptor Kennedy Yanko. Like all of Mason's works, the title of this piece relates to his everyday experiences as a Black man, and his interactions with society, culture, and the news.
"At the moment my work is completely about grief and mourning," Mason says. "It's always been about morbidity since I started. I’ve used icons, like the motif of the flower and bricks in the work. Baltimore has a lot of brick row homes. They show up a lot in the areas where factories used to be. The flower often represents myself, family, friends. It can fill in for persons or a person. I'm trying to figure out what they mean to me."
Mason leverages symbolic content—such as the color black, hidden text, and repeated pictorial motifs like flowers and bricks—to create interpretive aesthetic spaces that address his feelings. He asks how blackness can be experienced abstractly through installation and materials.
Mason’s brut forms, rough textures, and use of non-traditional mediums connect the work conceptually to notions of decay and questions about social and material value. The concepts and the content are there—they occupy physical and metaphysical space, but they are also a form of distraction. Formal aesthetic principles are also at work, as are notions of beauty and resistance. Viewers have the freedom and the responsibility to choose for themselves whether to acknowledge, reject, or ignore whatever references are perceptible within the work.
Mason is a recipient of the Maurice Freed Memorial Prize. He earned his Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019. His work was recently included in the exhibition Radical Reading Room at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, as well as in group exhibitions at Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill, NY; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI. Work by Mason is in the permanent collection of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Special Collections, New York, NY.
"At the moment my work is completely about grief and mourning," Mason says. "It's always been about morbidity since I started. I’ve used icons, like the motif of the flower and bricks in the work. Baltimore has a lot of brick row homes. They show up a lot in the areas where factories used to be. The flower often represents myself, family, friends. It can fill in for persons or a person. I'm trying to figure out what they mean to me."
Mason leverages symbolic content—such as the color black, hidden text, and repeated pictorial motifs like flowers and bricks—to create interpretive aesthetic spaces that address his feelings. He asks how blackness can be experienced abstractly through installation and materials.
Mason’s brut forms, rough textures, and use of non-traditional mediums connect the work conceptually to notions of decay and questions about social and material value. The concepts and the content are there—they occupy physical and metaphysical space, but they are also a form of distraction. Formal aesthetic principles are also at work, as are notions of beauty and resistance. Viewers have the freedom and the responsibility to choose for themselves whether to acknowledge, reject, or ignore whatever references are perceptible within the work.
Mason is a recipient of the Maurice Freed Memorial Prize. He earned his Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019. His work was recently included in the exhibition Radical Reading Room at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, as well as in group exhibitions at Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill, NY; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI. Work by Mason is in the permanent collection of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Special Collections, New York, NY.
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