The Frank Lloyd Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of sculpture by John Mason. New ceramic work will be presented in the first two rooms of the gallery. In the main gallery, a large fire brick sculpture will be installed. The work, titled Grand Rapids, was completed in 1973 as an installation for the Sculpture Off The Pedestal exhibition at Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was included in the Mason survey exhibition in 1974 at the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art and again in 1976 in the 200 Years of American Sculpture exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
By juxtaposing the new work and the 1973 installation, Mason will reveal the continuity of his investigations into modular structures. About his interest in the principles of Group Theory, he has said, "Geometry had a lot of meaning for me. It was helpful, because my involvement with firebrick was to start with the simplest possible unit, and then to develop some sort of complex structure. And in every case, the unit you were starting with had an equivalency with every other unit."
Mason's work over the past six decades presents one of the most compelling arguments for abstract sculpture. Critics from John Coplans to David Pagel have written about his work. In an article published by Art News, Suzanne Muchnic wrote:
"A major figure in ceramic sculpture, Mason emerged in the mid-1950s as one of the leaders of a revolution that transformed clay from a craft to a fine art medium… In his latest work, Mason has proved himself a master builder and sculptor who knows how to get the most out of a relatively simple three dimensional form."
John Mason is one of the most important artists working in Los Angeles today. Since the late 1950s, when he exhibited at the legendary Ferus Gallery, Mason has had one-man shows at the Pasadena Museum of Art (1960 and 1974), the Los Angeles County Museum (1966), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1978), and the Hudson River Museum (1978), among others.