Union

The large work of Charles Mason presented at Union gallery titled Backsliding, imposes itself in the room that houses it, sucking in the surrounding space in an overbearing manner, yet enticing its audience to take a virtual tour deep within themselves.

Ernest Holmes said “Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.” and something of this seems to happen when we are faced with the works of Charles Mason, whose mirrored surfaces produce strange, shadowy reflections.

We find our image reflected in a shallow, airless space shared by strange concrete forms, forcing us to reconsider the perception we have of ourselves and of others whose reflections are similarly trapped in the dark space that engulfs us.

Backsliding used in Christianity to describe the condition of reverting to a time prior to conversion, a return to false idolatry and an indulgence in sin.

At once playful and unnerving, the articulated and curving forms can be contemplated through the Perspex sheets, a highly industrialized material that rebuffs us like a riot shield, shows us our reflection framed within the work, distorts our perception of reality and engenders a very particular way of looking.