Masks
and Action Heroes
A New Exhibit by
Julie
MARDIN
at manhattantheatresource
May 8 – June 15, 2003
This
exhibit uses costume masks as its starting point, masks
of our political figures and our political symbols, that
are modeled or played with by dolls, toy soldiers and
action heroes.
The
work does not comment so much on the people the masks
represent as much as the nature of the media and public
personas, and the mystery that lies behind power.
The
masks are just part of the general stage-like feeling
of news as it is reported to us, as well as the unreal,
video-game-like nature of our conception of war, the complete
divorcing of our bombs from the reality of the destruction
that they wreak.
Superheroes play with a beach ball as a woman works
to de-mine a field, a rainbow is hauled into a field strewn
with corpses, a soldier extends a lollipop to a Hindu
Goddess, all try to deal with the dislocation of our sense
of reality, and to juxtapose our somewhat humorous pop
culture with the loftiness of our rhetoric, and the loftiness
of our rhetoric with what could be its gruesome outcome.
This
work grows out of earlier themes dealing with violent
toys and the belief that we can get a pretty good picture
of our society by studying its toy store shelves, and
the fanciful way in which violence and all the latest
in military gadgetry is marketed to children.
From photomontage, I have moved on to use the scanner
and Photoshop to digitally manipulate these miniatures.
Recent world events, and the postures of our leaders,
led to the idea that masks would be the perfect extension
of the toy metaphor in illustrating adult struggles.
Amidst “Powellpoint presentations”
and tail-wagging the dog news stories, as the Freedom
of Information Act is curtailed, satellite photos are
now forbidden for sale to commercial outlets, and government
whistleblowers are to be treated as criminals, in short,
as our independent sources of news verification are increasingly
under attack, the work asks the simple question of, what
is really behind the faces in the newspapers, on the TV? What are these people who are our politicians’
real motivation?
What is behind the theater that is our daily world?
The
works will be exhibited, appropriately enough, at the
site of an Off-Broadway theater and resource center for
actors, playwrights, and theater-goers, the manhattantheatresource.
The dates of the show will be from May 8 - June 15, 2003,
and there will be a reception on Friday, May 16, from
4-7 pm.
 
manhattantheatresource
is
located at
177 MacDougal Street, NYC 10011
(between 8th Street & Washington Square
Park)
Best Viewing Hours are between Noon – 7pm, 7 days
a week
(212) 260-4698
Co-presented
by The
Moon and Stars Project
For
more information please contact> juliemardin@earthlink.net
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