The Visual Art of Mark Mothersbaugh: Beautiful Mutants & Postcard Diaries
Monday 8 May - Wednesday 28 June 2006 : 10am - 7pm
Free
Beautiful Mutants & Postcard Diaries features the work of Mark Mothersbaugh, the founding member and driving force behind cult band DEVO, and the composer of soundtracks to The Rugrats, The Royal Tenenbaums and the Life Aquatic, among others. It will be Mothersbaugh’s first major exhibition in the
Beautiful Mutants 2006
Images pulled from man's past... then corrected into sickeningly beautiful beings.
A study of humans via symmetry using photos both recent & vintage.
Mark talks about his Beautiful Mutants project: Rorschach’s patterns, though abstract, suggest different visual images to each person who views them, and each interpretation is correct. Objects in this world are what they are to you because of how you happen to see them:
People are all hiding something. Many know exactly what that is, while most probably have no idea. Our asymmetrical exterior hides the true contents of each of us.
Aztec Indians built gigantic Kaleidoscopic pyramids that focused light from the sun through complex polished silver mirrors that reflected and flipped images of humans onto walls, giving rise to the celebration of a quest for true symmetry in their lives. In the 1800’s people would flirt with these ideas and play parlor games with signatures, paper cuttings, etc. It was in the early 1900’s that Rorschach and other psychiatrists developed theories and medical practices (inverted, as it turned out) based on their intuitive hunches regarding symmetry and the internal workings of man. Humans, great pretenders to bi-lateral symmetry, are in actuality, closer to potatoes in their lack of precise symmetry. A closer look reveals what is truly inside the people around us.
The photographs in this show were corrected in order to examine those who have walked the planet before us. Theoretically symmetrical in generalities, the subtle potato-like qualities of the human form allow the tenants of these bodies to hide within their asymmetric muddiness.
These corrected photographic images allow the true tenant of these human faces and figures to be ‘flushed-out’ and viewed without the disguise that we all so expertly hide behind.
Postcard Diaries 2006
During his downtime on early worldwide tours with DEVO, Mark Mothersbaugh began illustrating on postcards to send to his friends, which he still creates, and has been creating every day for over 30 years. It's an obsessive habit/hobby which still yields anywhere from one to a couple dozen new postcard-sized images per day.
The cards were originally created as his personal diaries, and were never intended for public viewing. That all changed when Mark decided to share his postcard works in his critically acclaimed solo shows during the 1980's & 1990's, and again with his worldwide 2003 Homefront Invasion! gallery tour.
Mark has archived nearly all the original postcard-sized works, filed neatly in spiral-bound folders at his home in Hollywood, CA. It is an astonishingly obsessive collection of private thoughts featuring Mark’s plethora of provoking & unusual imagery.