Rachel Mason.

RACHEL MASON

Circus Gallery, Los Angeles CA January 12 * February 16, 2008

Rachel Mason's latest show, "The Candidate," comes at an auspicious time. Drawing on recent activity connected with the upcoming presidential elections, Mason stirs up a veritable tempest of drawings and sculptures showing all the political figures vying for candidacy. Traveling on the actual campaign trails of political icons like Hilary Clinton and John Edwards, Mason composed many hundreds of drawings, perfectly capturing the strained, often hysterical pace of the world of politics. These drawings are hardly simple caricatures, however, offering evidence of a far more insidious and socially destructive process.

Tackling political subjects in art making has always been a risky business, and there are moments when Mason teeters on the edge of standup comedy, bathing her rhetoric in self-indulgent muckraking. But rather than aggrandize or denigrate these figures as politicians, Mason addresses the political machinery as a separate entity, showing it to be an all-encompassing, terrifying, if sometimes necessary process.

Mason breaks up "The Candidate" work into a number of distinct categories, including "Hopefuls," "Monsters," "Ghosts," "Also-Rans," and "Never-Rans." There are candidates who constantly equivocate, leaning whichever way the wind blows. Hilary Clinton is thus both "Hopeful" and a "Monster," a woman on the rise who alternates in public opinion between a common harridan and potentially the most auspicious leader this country has ever produced. Mason's charcoal drawing of Clinton, The Orator (all work 2008), shows a diminutive woman with exaggerated yet striking features, gesturing maniacally as she speaks into that ever-present political appendage, the campaign microphone.

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Other drawings--such as Sickle (from the "Monsters" series), showing John McCain's face grotesquely twisted into the sword of death--conjure the seemingly inhuman behavior of all presidential frontrunners. Also included in the show are several mock podiums with Hydrocal casts of the artist's hands mimicking a particular gesture she noted during the campaign tours, such as My Turn. Taken out of context these hand movements have an otherworldly, dramaturgical quality. Are these politicians attempting to raise the dead or is it simply meant to emphasize a point? The fact that it is both never entirely escapes attention.

"The Candidate" points an inquiring finger at the media circus surrounding public life. Like something straight out of Greek mythology, everyone in this vale of shadows and fatal turnabouts is a scapegoat for every imaginable social deprivation, and so offers slim pickings for any reasoned choice. Perhaps it all boils down to the most basic kind of physical attraction, where, rather like the fate of Orpheus himself, the contender is at once disappointed lover, transgressive medium, and high priest of mystery. Mason understands all this and plays it to the hilt. Perhaps we Americans should dispense with the ceremony completely and just vote for the one we most want to screw?