OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — August 16, 2021 — Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS is proud to present Real Property, an exhibition of recent work by Andrew Mount. Real Property will open on the evening of
September 3, 2021 with an artist talk hosted by Pro Arts Gallery curator Maymanah Farhat.
The exhibition will highlight recent large-scale banners, prints, and paintings that interrogate how financial debt is an integral part of everyday life and a regenerating force of capitalism, as financial institutions have created a new market where it is used to ensure the constant movement of capital.
In an accompanying artist statement, Mount notes that everything from health care to education is circumscribed by debt to such an extent that it now informs ideas of citizenry and morality in addition to legality. In a series of black and white banners, Mount appropriates the aesthetics of heraldry, specifically the design and display of shields and flags that have been used to signal rank and pedigree since ancient times. Adopting the symbolic arrangement of escutcheons, or the image of a shield in a coat of arms, he assembles a series of signs and symbols that are similarly used today as a means of valorizing wealth while enforcing social norms based on one’s proximity to debt. Zeroing in on the aesthetics of pageantry and how these meticulously designed objects represented wealth accumulation and a family’s private military might,
Mount creates new symbolic arrangements that signal how this connection between wealth and violence continues in different forms. Emphasizing the extent to which the unbreakable cycle of debt that now affects daily life is a form of violence, Mount uses the logos of large financial institutions, the images of politicians and business leaders who have pushed for and benefit most from the debt market, and imagery drawn from American popular culture that is associated with a sort of celebrated lawlessness, such as the mythology of the Cowboy, a product of American exceptionalism. This same sense of exceptionalism or lawlessness is normalized among financial institutions, and packaged as a sort of intelligence and power that all citizens should aspire to.
A circular display of these updated heraldic objects describes how massive accumulation of wealth and debt are intertwined and thus permeate every aspect of modern life. A series of gestural abstract paintings that draw from the universal design of currency offset the intricate insignia of the banners. Placed on adjacent walls as a continuous display of overlapping lines and colors, these works on paper reflect an inherent rhythm, and in this context allude to the cyclical nature of the debt market. As the viewer circles the central display of the exhibition in order to “read” the content of the banners, they are surrounded by a sea of nondescript designs inspired by bank notes. These lines are traditionally inconsequential to the overall image of the currency but function as visual accents that guide the eyes to symbolic representations of wealth, nationalism, and cultural patrimony. Together, the included works signify how, much like Feudal societies, our survival under capitalism today depends on the very systems that are intent on our demise.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Andrew Mount is an English artist and educator whose artwork has been shown in the UK, Bulgaria, Germany and USA. Mount’s artwork involves a range of media, dependent upon the needs of the project.
His artwork includes Installation, Collaboration, Participation, Digital Media, Painting, Printing, Video and Drawing. Participatory, or socially-engaged art practice has become a centrally motivating element in Mount’s work, and constituted his doctoral focus and subsequent academic research. Current artwork includes paintings that meditate upon the reification of signifiers within the empirical structure of finance (such as greek glyphs); an investigation into the assumption of divine rights, royalty and the dawn of capitalism; a collaborative work that uses custom software paired with anachronistic hardware to present an installation that recodes the aesthetic profile of current political events. Mount gained a BA(Hons) First Class in Painting from the University of Reading (UK), an MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College, CUNY and an EdD in Interdisciplinary Studies in Art & Art Education from Columbia University. He has been living and working in the USA since 1997, and currently lives and works in the Bay Area.