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'Holy Holy Holy' by Morgan Mandalay at Catbox Contemporary, New York

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Catbox Contemporary is proud to present, “Holy Holy Holy”, an exhibition of new work by Morgan Mandalay. Using the “Book of Tobit” (a Catholic story centering around the exorcising of demons) as a starting point, Mandalay generates a visual narrative about class, populism, and agency through the lens of 18th century painting. The walls of the gallery are painted a pale pink, meant to reference the Timken Museum of Art, a small museum in San Diego Mandalay used to frequent because of its free entry for the public and prominent collection of Rococo paintings. Here he uses the sentimentality of the setting to help conjure the anarchistic energy latent in painting’s history.

The scenes in Mandalay’s paintings are strained through gaping mouths filled with pearly impasto teeth. Caught between an oral-inspection and a scream, the mouths of Mandalay become a framing device for the artist’s representations of Williams Blake’s depiction of Albion (the main character in a story about the fall and division of a primeval man) and a French cartoon of King Louis XVI (the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution) with his family before his execution. In both paintings, the narrative focus is a personal descent from the known to the otherworldly and the breakdown of established institutional norms into fragmented parts. To help channel that anarchy, a ceramic sculpture of a splayed fish (somewhere between Soutine and a wax anatomical model) turned incense-holder sits on the gallery’s checkered floor. The strings of smoke from the incense mimic Mandalay’s gestural paint handling.

The iconoclastic nature of Mandalay’s engagingly grotesque mouths against the soft colors and lines of his Rococo influence depict an artist who is at odds with the classism and imposed romance of bygone eras that were filled with oppression, anarchy, and violence.

16.9.18 — 14.10.18

Catbox Contemporary

'ABSINTHE', Group Show Curated by PLAGUE at Smena, Kazan

'Pupila' by Elizabeth Burmann Littin at Two seven two gallery, Toronto

'Auxiliary Lights' by Kai Philip Trausenegger at Bildraum 07, Vienna

'Inferno' by Matthew Tully Dugan at Lomex, New York

'Зamok', Off-Site Group Project at dentistry Dr. Blumkin, Moscow

'Dog, No Leash', Group Show at Spazio Orr, Brescia

'Syllables in Heart' by Thomas Bremerstent at Salgshallen, Oslo

'Out-of-place artifact', Off-Site Project by Artem Briukhov in Birsk Fortress, Bi

'Gardening' by Daniel Drabek at Toni Areal, Zurich

'HALF TRUTHS', Group Show at Hackney Road, E2 8ET, London

'Unknown Unknowns' by Christian Roncea at West End, The Hague

'Thinking About Things That Are Thinking' by Nicolás Lamas at Meessen De Clercq,

‘Funny / Sad’, Group Show by Ian Bruner, Don Elektro & Halo, curated by Rhizome P

'Don’t Die', Group Show at No Gallery, New York

'Almost Begin' by Bronson Smillie at Afternoon Projects, Vancouver

'I'll Carry Your Heart's Gray Wing with a Trembling Hand to My Old Age', Group Sh

'hapy like a fly' by Clément Courgeon at Colette Mariana, Barcelona

'Fear of the Dark' by Jack Evans at Soup, London

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