Star Death and the Pain Body
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Star Death and The Pain Body by artist Rachel Mason.
Star Death and the Pain Body is an immersive video environment created by Rachel Mason as part of an ongoing performance-based cosmology in which she correlates the events in the life cycle of stars to different states of human trauma. Through interviews with physicists, Mason’s effort is to understand the conditions of the cosmos in human terms. In Star Death and The Pain Body, the exploration is the end stage of a star’s life, and the possibility of two types of death – explosion or implosion, with the two possible outcomes – supernova or black hole. The video features master of contemporary dance, Oguri, as the physical embodiment of the human experience, as well as the voices of 2017 Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne, Caltech’s Rana Adhikari, and UCLA’s professor of astrophysics, Andrea Ghez. It also features original music by Mason. This endeavor is part of a larger project by Mason with various collaborators, called The Moving Mountain, which is a sponsored program of Fulcrum Arts.
Rachel Mason is an artist, songwriter, performer and filmmaker. She has written three operas, recorded fourteen albums of songs, directed a musical feature film which was released in 2016, and has two more films in production. Her work has been the subject of articles in publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Vice Magazine, Artforum, ArtNews, Art in America. Her work has been presented at institutions including The Queens Museum, School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Henry Gallery in Seattle, James Gallery at CUNY, University Art Museum in Buffalo, Sculpture Center, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard, The New Museum, Park Avenue Armory, Art in General, La Mama, Galapagos, Dixon Place, and Empac Center for Performance in Troy. She holds a BA degree from UCLA and MFA from Yale University. She was a recipient of a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council award and a New York Foundation for the Arts Opportunity Grant. Mason is currently a guest lecturer at UCLA.
Installation
