TIMESTAMPS
Paul Chambers and Allen Mooney Oct 21 - Dec 13, 2024
Timestamps
Curated by Scott Oldfield and Wylie Schwartz
The Dowd Gallery is pleased to present “Timestamps,” an exhibition that brings together work by two longtime friends – American sculptor Allen Mooney and late British painter Paul Chambers (1951-2012.) Taking a closer look at these two important figures, this exhibition highlights the aesthetic, philosophical, and political concerns that preoccupy both artists, and served as the foundation for a thirty-five-year friendship that began in 1977 when they first met as graduate students in the MFA program at Cornell University. What might upon first glance seem an unlikely pairing - Mooney, a native of Los Angeles, a child of Mexican and Irish heritage, who emerged from a formalist background in sculpture – and the abstract political landscape painter Chambers, a native of Lincolnshire, England, home of the Magna Carta, and a descendent of a long line of British Parliamentarians – turned out to be a life-long artistic friendship that asserted meaningful influence upon both artists. In “Timestamps,” we present a selection of works that serve to uncover the thematic interplay between Chambers and Mooney’s artistic practices, drawing attention to the connective tissue that intersects within their theoretical and aesthetic frameworks. Broad themes of war and peace; the communicative power of art; metaphor and meaning; and human perception play an integral role in much of the work on view. From Mooney’s early experimentation with neon, to the relentlessly sharp bits and pieces that reoccur throughout his sculptural forms – many produced during the nineteen years he taught sculpture as a faculty member in Cortland’s Art & Art History Department – he investigates the ambient psychological effects of perception upon human psychology. Drawing inspiration from the formative relationships that shaped the artist’s life, his experiences as a veteran of the Vietnam War, and employment that included, among many things, apprentice ironworker and commercial fishing off the Pacific coast - Mooney’s work is decidedly biographical, acting as metaphors that attempt to fix time and space. If Mooney’s work seeks to affect the way the viewer feels, Chambers was more concerned with art’s potential to affect how one thinks. Chambers’ colorful and provocative abstractions operate as the communicative vehicle through which he expresses larger ideas regarding his intense desire for lasting international peace. Many of his paintings hold ‘keys’ to solving some of the world’s more intricate political issues, existing like puzzles – mysteriously cryptic visual languages waiting to be deciphered. An avid stamp collector since childhood, Chambers saw the Universal Postal Union – which survived both World Wars – as an organization representing the universal acceptance that sharing of goods, ideas, and art on a level playing field are of great value in society. His continued reference to the legacy of the Transorma, a letter sorting machine invented by the Dutch in 1927, operates as an ongoing metaphor for the transporting and sorting of data that characterizes the human experience. As each piece of mail passing through the Transorma received an ident – a pair of letters operating as a time stamp – the works on display in this exhibition function in a similar mode: markers denoting specific historical moments. Viewed collectively, what surfaces in this show is a distinctive presentation of a set of aesthetic-politico ideas, values and themes that are as much a response to the time they were made as they are prophetic visions of the future.
-Wylie Schwartz, 2024
