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Adam Mysock
Having Found the Lowest Threshold (St. George Slaying the Dragon)
2013

Name: Having Found the Lowest Threshold (St. George Slaying the Dragon)
Brand: Adam Mysock
Price: 12500 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

After: Nicolas Poussin’s Massacre of the Innocents, from 1629 Framed: 8.50h x 9.50w in In the summer of 2013, the murder of Trayvon Martin dominated weeks of news cycles. As if we needed more of such news, the city of New Orleans had its own slate of what I referred to as “murdered minors.” The whole phenomenon reminded me of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents, the story in which Herod orders the execution of all young males in Bethlehem to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn king. I began questioning what justification could possibly defend these modern slayings, and it quickly dawned on me that it never seemed to take much for the killers to justify their actions. Sometimes it was a simple as the victim wearing the wrong kind of clothing. Nicolas Poussin’s The Massacre of the Innocents has always been my favorite depiction of the aforementioned biblical tale, but much like the killing of youths that seemed to characterize that summer, it had never been a settled image for me. I decided to experiment with it, to see what changes I had to compel in order for the actions depicted to feel reasonable. Having Found the Lowest Threshold (St. George Slaying the Dragon) was the result. The women and children had to be from another world—they had to be aggressive—in order for the soldier’s actions to feel “okay.” Sadly, those two criteria could be met simple by giving them another skin color and a different vision than the one holding the weapon. ABOUT THE ARTIST Adam Mysock was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1983 - the son of an elementary school English teacher and a lab technician who specializes in the manufacturing of pigments. On account of a steady stream of folk tales from his mother, his father's vividly dyed work clothes, and a solid Midwestern work ethic, he developed an interest in painting and drawing all things Americana from a very early age. Mysock earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Art History by 2004 from Tulane University. He then received an MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. After his studies, he became the mural coordinator for the City of Cincinnati's MuralWorks mural program and worked as an adjunct drawing professor at Sinclair Community College in Dayton. In the summer of 2008, Mysock became a Professor of Practice at Tulane University where he currently teaches and maintains a studio. Mysock's work has been exhibited in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana and is in private collections across the US, including those of Thomas Coleman and Michael Wilkinson. He was a 2009 jury winner in the annual No Dead Artists juried exhibition. On August 4th, 2012 he was awarded first prize “Best in Show” in the Ogden Museum’s Louisiana Contemporary Annual Juried Exhibition. Mysock exhibited at Pulse Miami Art Fair in December 2012 with Jonathan Ferrara Gallery and he was selected for the 2013 Edition of New American Paintings. Mysock was exhibited in a solo project booth at the VOLTA9 Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland where he was acquired by the SØR Rusche Collection. In 2015, Mysock’s work will be featured in a Baroque and Contemporary group exhibition from the SØR Rusche Collection, Oelde/Berlin at Kunsthalle Jesuitenkirche as well as in a solo exhibition entitled When Everything Was Wonderful Tomorrow at Galerie Andreas Binder in Munich, Germany. I’m a revisionist history painter. Rather than rewrite the narrative of the past to justify an ideology, I repaint yesterday’s imagery in order to rationalize our present circumstances. Mysock says of his work, “Telling stories is a part of human nature; it’s how we relate to one another. The stories we have in common help us create sincere connections to our neighbors and our surroundings. What’s more, storytelling – for better or worse – typically involves hyperbole. We tend to exaggerate; we tend to lie. Generally, we believe we control our narrative embellishments. What gets exaggerated from one telling to another gets exaggerated to challenge our listeners. What gets repeated gets repeated because it resonates with them. What gets omitted gets left out because it’s lost its meaning. We actively use embellishment to keep our audiences engaged. Given enough distance, however, sources and accuracy fade out and substitutions become the new norms. Quietly, time redefines what is truth and what is fiction. As a painter, I’m preoccupied by the undeniable role that the image plays in creating this acceptance of the fictional. A painting has the authority to make the intangible concrete, and a series of them has the ability to authenticate a fabrication in our collective memory. When I begin a piece, I typically start with preexisting images, artifacts from this collective remembrance. I look for images that shape my pictorial consciousness, that are hard to question because when I first saw them they were presented as the truth. They have to capture my imagination and they have to feel largely descriptive of a greater story. From them, I’m given my task – I have to “disrepair” them. I have to consolidate an earlier world of historical and cultural visual-fact with an evolving understanding of subtlety and gradation. I find that the discrepancies I discover between the absolute and the nuanced inspire me most. The resultant work is largely about storytelling, the ownership and authorship of our culture’s visual narratives, and the parallels between those tales. It’s meant to challenge the truth of “source” and the source of truth. After all, as Franz Kafka once wrote, "It is hard to tell the truth, for although there 'is' one, it is alive and constantly changes its face." statement "In the summer of 2013, the murder of Trayvon Martin dominated weeks of news cycles. As if we needed more of such news, the city of New Orleans had its own slate of what I referred to as “murdered minors.” The whole phenomenon reminded me of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents, the story in which Herod orders the execution of all young males in Bethlehem to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn king. I began questioning what justification could possibly defend these modern slayings, and it quickly dawned on me that it never seemed to take much for the killers to justify their actions. Sometimes it was a simple as the victim wearing the wrong kind of clothing. Nicolas Poussin’s The Massacre of the Innocents has always been my favorite depiction of the aforementioned biblical tale, but much like the killing of youths that seemed to characterize that summer, it had never been a settled image for me. I decided to experiment with it, to see what changes I had to compel in order for the actions depicted to feel reasonable. Having Found the Lowest Threshold (St. George Slaying the Dragon) was the result. The women and children had to be from another world—they had to be aggressive—in order for the soldier’s actions to feel “okay.” Sadly, those two criteria could be met simple by giving them another skin color and a different vision than the one holding the weapon."

Creator:

Adam Mysock (1983, American)

Creation Year:

2013

Dimensions:

Height: 6 in (15.24 cm)Width: 7 in (17.78 cm)

Medium:

Panel,Acrylic

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

21st Century