MASKS AND ACTION HEROES
A New Exhibition by Julie Mardin

Co-presented by the manhattantheatresource

May 8-June 15, 2003
Daily 12:00 pm - 7:00 pm   
Opening Reception:
Friday, May 16, 2003, 4:00 pm-7:00 pm
manhattantheatresource
177 MacDougal Street, between Eighth Street and Washington Square Park
(212) 260-4698

In Masks and Action Heroes, Julie Mardin uses costume masks as a starting point for a provocative, and timely commentary on contemporary political figures and symbols. She uses photomontage, as well as a scanner and Photoshop to digitally manipulate miniature figures such as dolls, toy soldiers and action heroes. The figures and masks are, according to Mardin, more a commentary on the nature of the media, public personas, and the mystery that lies behind power, than on any actual people they might represent. They contribute to the general stage-like feeling of the news, as well as the unreal, video-game-like nature of our conception of war, where bombs are divorced from the reality of the destruction they wreak.

In Mardin’s work, one finds superheroes playing with a beach ball as a woman works to de-mine a field, a rainbow being hauled into a field strewn with corpses, and a soldier extending a lollipop to a Hindu Goddess. According to Mardin, the figures are “trying to deal with the dislocation of our sense of reality, and to juxtapose our somewhat humorous pop culture with the loftiness of our rhetoric, and the loftiness of our rhetoric with what could be its gruesome outcome.”

This exhibition grew out of Mardin’s earlier interest in themes dealing with violent toys and the belief that we can get a fairly accurate picture of society by studying the shelves of its toy stores. Mardin avers that, “After the frustrations of recent politics, the deep sense of helplessness in the face of world events and the actions of our leaders; amidst ‘Powellpoint presentations’ and tail-wagging the dog news stories; as the Freedom of Information Act is curtailed, satellite photos are now forbidden for sale to commercial outlets, and government whistleblowers are treated as criminals; the work asks the simple question of, what is really behind the faces in the newspapers, on the TV? What are our politicians’ real motivations? What is behind the theater that is our daily world?”

The works will be exhibited at the manhattantheatresource, an off-Broadway theater and resource center for actors, playwrights, and theater-goers.