PAST:
Paul McMahon and Evan Whale
NADA New York
March 2-5, 2017
For the 2017 edition of NADA New York, 321 Gallery is pleased to present a booth exhibition of work by Paul McMahon and Evan Whale.
Paul McMahon (b. 1950, San Diego, CA) is a musician, artist, writer, producer, curator, minister, and part-time mailman. His work includes painting, sculpture, video, musical recordings, and works on paper. In the early 1970s, McMahon began organizing exhibitions, parties, and rock shows in Cambridge, MA and New York City, playing a vital role in bringing together artists in the post-Conceptual and pre-Pictures generation. During the 1970s, McMahon created a diverse body of work addressing corruption in government, the art world, and pictures themselves. In later decades, he continued producing work as live performances and video, satirizing politicians and the advertising world, often from a shamanic orientation.
Working between digital and analogue photographic platforms, Evan Whale (b. 1987, Washington, DC) explores the intersections of socio-political histories, environmental change, and photographic representation in the 21st century. Employing his experimental process as an investigative tool, Whale makes work where the languages of photography and painting overlap. He treats the photographic surface as a means of recording light, color, image, chemical alteration, or primed canvas ready to record a physical mark.
While generations apart, both artists scrutinize the photographic landscape, collecting images and words that speak toward the cultural and environmental tremors of our time. McMahon directs a sharp blade at Americans and their own sense of progress, while Whale’s obsession with earthquakes speak to a national anxiety and fear of global collapse. For NADA New York 2017, 321 Gallery will be exhibiting a selection of McMahon’s postcards from the 1970’s, works on paper, and hanging sculptures, alongside Whale’s unique meditations derived from earthquake seismograms, scratched onto the photographic surface by his hand in the dark.
RELATED PRESS
Rachel Miller, "Best in Show: Brooklyn at NADA and SPRING/BREAK," Brooklyn Magazine, March 4, 2017
Anne Doran and Andrew Russeth, "Fair’s Fare: Highlights fromNADA New York," ArtNews, March 3, 2017
Scott Indrisek, "Think Art Is Overly Academic? You’re Wrong," The Observer, March 3, 2017
Chris Wiley, "Goings On About Town: Evan Whale," New Yorker, October, 2016
Kari Rittenbach, "Paul McMahon," Artforum, January 2016 (PDF)