Mitchel K. Ahern
Born in Rochester, NY. Received a B.A. from Clark University, Worcester, MA. Lives and works in Swampscott, MA.
Recent performances at 119 Gallery, Lowell, MA; Lesley University, Boston Cyberarts Festival, Cambridge, MA; Zeitgeist Gallery, Cambridge, MA; and Marblehead Arts Association, Marblehead, MA.
Participated in group exhibitions at 119 Gallery, Lowell, MA; and Marblehead Arts Association, Marblehead, MA .
Mitchel Ahern interweaves ideas about text, textiles, and politics. It’s not unusual to find advertising imagery and copy on domestic items. Wal-Mart® is full of overt product marketing on dishtowels, beach blankets, T-shirts, rugs, etc. Purchasing, using, and displaying these items is a political act, whether the consumer is aware of it or not. Ahern feels that dishtowels, imagined as flags and banners, can be more pointedly political and provocative. Propaganda should live in our kitchens, wiping dishes, and mopping up spills.
In his monumental scrolls based on Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, the 1950s Beat Generation novel famously typed on one unbroken roll of paper, Ahern turns the history of books backwards. Letterpress technology was developed to mass-produce books in the now familiar codex (bound pages) format. Here the artist uses hand-cut type to print text on unique scrolls, the ancient book format rendered obsolete by the codex. This historical inversion, coupled with the sheer size of the scrolls, underscores the political and cultural significance of Kerouac’s work.
-Nick Capasso, Curator
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My work has been built upon layers of fascinations. I am enthralled by the transformation of plain text into typeset text, the excitement of finding a typo, or a broken letter, or uncut pages in a book. I seek balance on the teetering edge between conceptual identities: What is the point at which textual meaning becomes de-natured? Where is the line between marketing communication and art? How do you reconcile composition and improvisation? What distinguishes an everyday object from the sublime?
For many years I have carved linoleum block text and images, mostly for T-shirts; more recently I've been cutting moveable type alphabets. As an extension of my performance art practice I began using the alphabets to print pithy diatribes on “flour-sack” dishtowels. The Kerouac scroll of On The Road as it was originally published was designed as an element of multimedia performance; the second scroll as the unpublished counterpoint.
-Mitchel K. Ahern
Image: Mitchel K. Ahern, On The Road Scrolls (detail), 2007, linocut prints on a single bolt of muslin, 60' x 18" (each)
Meet the Artist/Performance: Mitchel Ahern
Ahern will perform and discuss his work in The 2008 DeCordova Annual Exhibition
Museum Galleries
Saturday, June 14 at 3 pm
FREE with Campus Admission
