Conditional love and endurance: what is required for someone’s life to be considered valuable? What does it take for someone to care for you or for you to care for someone and how do we endure this? I asked myself these questions 3 years ago when I moved back to Baltimore from graduate school and started to think about the relationship I have with my father. I want to know him and build a new connection around who we are now and how we love each other. The examining of our relationship became a springboard for where my practice has been situated these last few years and it’s become one focused on labor, love/grief, poetics and material.
About the Artist
Charles Mason III (Baltimore, MD) received his AA in General Studies from the Community College of Baltimore County, 2010, BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, 2014, and his Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2019. He has curated several shows in Baltimore and Philadelphia as well as had solo shows which include Screaming in Silence, My Salvation is Love (The End), at Anna Zorina Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2022, Goya Contemporary Gallery Baltimore, MD, 2021, and Spillway Collective, Philadelphia, PA, 2019. He has participated in group exhibitions, A Gathering, HOUSING Gallery New York, NY, Radical Reading Room, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Harlem, NY, Breaching the Margins, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI, CARPE DIEM, UTA Art Space and Surface is only a Material Vehicle for Spirit, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL to name a few. He has work in the permanent collection of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, the Whitney Museum of American Art Special Collections, and the Hammer Museum Grunwald Center Collection, he is also a recipient of Maurice Freed Memorial Prize.Featured Work
Photos
Featured Work: Photos
why'd you leave, no you left, no you transition to a different plane
oil stick, house paint, acrylic, spray paint, tee shirt
2023
more work to do (thought about the sounds of stillness, knew the work wasn't done)
acrylic, oil stick, pastel, posters, tape, house paint, and fabric on paper
2022
The push and pull of paper and fabric allows for the work to both contain its shape but also create a strong shell like structure. With this work I look at it as an example of ways to construct surfaces that can be peeled and moves upon surfaces like walls or ceiling.
let the song be heard
tape, ink, oil stick, acrylic
2022
these sing (song, note, melody)
oil stick, pastel
2022
what could the flower mean (if not alive, dead, if not dead, alive) 1
plaster, dried/dead sunflowers, resin, bucket
2022