Best title for a show ever. When I graduated with my MFA in
photography, I wanted to get it embroidered on the back of a beige
photojournalist vest. Mahler’s tie-died paintings have become utterly transfixing.
I found myself mildly hypnotized trying to decipher the stylish blocked text
that spelled out young people / art abbreviations. The text started out as
straightforward and readable big block letters, but they have progressed to the
point where they are almost abstracted, mirrored, occasionally inverted and
forming what look like Native American patterns. The lettering is on top of a
solid variety of tie-died canvasses, from the faded t-shirt of a Vietnam vet
selling whip-its in balloons in the parking lot of a Dead show, to a bright triumphant
t-shirt of Joe Cocker singing at Woodstock. The tie-dye is about as loaded an
abstraction as you can get, and laying very contemporary abbreviations on top
of them creates a wonderful double negative of hippies and texting short hand
that implode into each other to create something very attractive. With that
much annoying cultural capital in the paintings, it overwhelming transforms the
work into a guilt-free play on color and line. Also, the more I found myself trying
to decipher the text, (like what does NSFW mean?), the more transfixing the tie-die
became. I found it quite enjoyable to wallow in the desired trippy effect of
tie-die. There was also a skull, a Buddha and the Virgin Mary covered in
colorful paint that I am a little unresolved about, but I’m looking forward to
see where Mahler is going with it.
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