Opening: Jack Massing: Compression

Jack Massing: Compression
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 27, 6-8 pm
On View: January 27–February 24

Houston artist Jack Massing, known internationally as one of The Art Guys, will be featured at kind of a small array in Magdalena. This will be his first solo project in New Mexico.

Massing employs found materials, humor, linguistic puns, and a tendency to follow through on fugitive ideas that occur to him serendipitously.

Compression will feature video, assemblage, artist books, and a capillary beverage cup patented in 2016 to aid astronauts drinking of liquids in zero gravity environments. The cup was invented by Texas and Oregon based NASA scientists Mark Weislogel, Donald Pettit, Andrew Wollman, and Ryan Jenson.

Mr. Massing will be in attendance at the show and may invite the curious to hear how he came to be gifted with a prototype of the cup after a meeting with Weislogel and Pettit, in which he offered an important piece of the puzzle concerning a large fuel storage tank that will be in orbit around the moon.

Massing’s one minute video, Tired and Lazy, features the image of a tire leaning against a tree in the foreground and a river in the background, from which the title is derived. Seemingly a one liner, by the end of the video the word-play collapses, leaving you to float gently down river in an inner tube of amused consideration of what you have just observed.

Two recently published books, Massing’s Thanks A Million and a collaboration with William Wegman, Two Clever By Half, will be available for purchase and signing by the artist.

Massing most recently visited New Mexico in September/October 2023 as a participant in the Alive Festival in Truth or Consequences.

kind of a small array is supported by a New Mexico Creative Industries Grant.