REN MAHON

WRITTEN BY JOANNA PLATT

Ren Mahon creates lustrous documents in cast glass, records of heat and pressure. Found objects generate a framework for viewing the glass artifacts, pointing at their shared circumstances. On the wall an umbrella handle and a spray of plastic flowers bisect lavender and black glass panes, analogous colors resonating in formalist dialogue. The sole of a shoe converses with a pane of cast gray glass. A traffic pole transcribes the moment of impact; the notches inscribed on its surface are a memento mori, a measurement.

Mahon interrogates the dominance of the artist over the medium, transferring agency to the materials. The weight of plaster poured into stretched latex creates the mold, a collaboration with gravity. Heated to just below flow temperature, the fragments of glass bind together, yet retain their individuality. Jagged edges soften but do not liquefy, in both stasis and suspension. Black glass cats, bluebirds, a chipped purple pony – castaway relics from the now-defunct Fenton Art Glass factory in West Virginia become raw materials for the castings. Transforming objects made for middle-class consumption, Mahon seeks to understand the energy within this shifting ecosystem. The barrels of glass arrive without technical instructions. Mahon observes, adjusts, and responds to each batch, a constantly modifiable feedback loop. The content is the condition of its making, the work a monument to its production.

In Mahon’s archive, materials and processes devoid of words or symbols catalog and reprocess the detritus of industry. A dossier for future viewers to decode otherwise untitled works contains parenthetical expressions that hint at their history. Two black panels are Untitled 1 and 2 (Fenton Witch and Scardey Cat Seconds). Another Untitled blue piece is parenthetically titled (Fenton Blue Bird of Happiness), a postindustrial canary singing coal country blues. Like the mutable molecular structure of glass, our ecosystem is inherently unstable; we are its causation and its casualties

WAS THAT (FACTORY DEFECTIVES SERIES)

IN MAHON’S ARCHIVE, MATERIALS AND PROCESSES DEVOID OF WORDS OR SYMBOLS CATALOG AND REPROCESS THE DETRITUS OF INDUSTRY.

INCIDENT / RESPONSE

(right)

Steel

WAS THAT (FACTORY DEFECTIVES SERIES)

(below)

Installation view.

02-09-22, FACTORY DROPS

USA PRESENTS LAVENDER

FOR