Last Friday, Mike and Josiah sat down (virtually) with Morgan Mandalay in his studio. Morgan will be a participating artist in the exhibition Combover, which will run in our 2021 exhibition season. Mike, Josiah, and Morgan continued their conversation about how his works reflect and draw out the themes in Combover.
In his practice, Morgan Mandalay mines narratives, mythologies, and different histories, “for some sort of personal resonance.” Let’s explore and mine our own personal narrative like Mandalay through the activity below...
Steps:
Find a photo of yourself. It can be physical or digital and from any time in your life.
In one sentence, write a description of the photo based on your best recollection or understanding of the moment it presents.
In a second sentence, write an imagined description (or myth) of the photo and its origin, inspired by a work of fiction or art.
In a final, third sentence, compose a description of the photo that combines the first sentence and the second sentence.
Send to us at friends@stoveworks.org, if you’d like it to be posted for viewers to explore and to try to decipher myth from reality.
Example:
Josiah Golson, Chattanooga, TN
Fact: My friend and collaborator Roy took this photo of me by an electric box with a wrap of my art shortly after it was installed.
Myth: A stranger took this photo of me standing next to my art after they observed me painting this electric box.
A stranger named Roy took this photo of me standing next to my art shortly after it was painted on the box.
A Clip from the Visit:
Questions to think about:
Which description was most difficult to write? Why do you think so?
How did you choose your fictional inspiration for sentence 2?
In our collective histories and storytellings, do you think we’re able to determine whether our narratives fit into one of the above categories like the exercise provides? Why or why not?
About Morgan Mandalay:
Morgan Mandalay, along with being an artist, is the founder and director of the itinerant exhibition project SPF15 and co-organizer of Fresh Bread Gallery in Chicago, IL. Morgan has had solo exhibitions at Klowden Mann (Los Angeles, CA), Everybody (Chicago, IL), Cat Box Contemporary (Queens, NY), BWSMX (Mexico City, MEX), and Et Al Gallery (San Francisco, CA) among others. His work has been included recently in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Flag Foundation (New York, NY), Sibling (Toronto, CAN), Bahamas Biennale (Detroit, MI), DAMA (Turin, ITA), Kimberly Klark (Queens, NY), 0-0 (Los Angeles, CA), Galleria Acapella (Naples, ITA), Left Field (San Luis Obispo, CA), LVL3 (Chicago, IL), and Yautepec (Mexico City, MEX). He was a 2018 Fellow of Shandaken Project's Paint School in New York, NY. In 2017 he completed his MFA at University of California San Diego, and holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works has been written about in Artforum, Hyperallergic, Autre Magazine, Beaux Art Magazine, Artillery Magazine, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Times.
About Combover:
The main point here is, despite your earnestness and best efforts, you’re not fooling anyone. But we’ll play along. The social contract must be upheld, I guess. Is this a moment where we both recognize the awkward mortality that reveals itself in each of our bodies and the frail attempts at defying death? Do these subtle gestures of subterfuge make folks more human, or are they less due to their having augmented reality?