Math Bass: OFF THE CLOCK to Open 5/3 at MoMA PS1

MoMA PS1 presents the inaugural solo museum exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Math Bass (American, b. 1981). Off the Clock includes a selection of paintings from the Newz! Series, recent sculptures, and also debuts Bass's latest video, Drummer Boi (2015). The Second Floor Project Rooms at MoMA PS1 will be architecturally transformed to reflect the artist's ongoing interest in the way bodies move through space, probing the porousness of defined structures.

Bass is interested in ambiguous images that produce multiple ways of seeing a single composition. The most famous examples of these kinds of pictures include optical illusions like the profile of a duck that also looks like a rabbit, or the profile of an old woman that also looks like a young woman turning her head away. Employing a simplified formal language-solid colors, natural materials, basic geometric shapes, and recognizable symbols-Bass's works oscillate between bodily and architectural forms, emphasizing the tension between containment and mobility.

Bass's paintings deploy a personal lexicon that centers on possible actions or transitional spaces: cigarettes emit plumes of smoke; alligators emerge with mouths wide open; letters and punctuation marks twist and overlap; and archways, staircases, and zigzags suggest movement. Bass's sculptures are similarly dynamic- bending, leaning, and slithering across the floor and wall- implying potential actions or movements and corresponding bodily positions. Additionally, Bass invited artist Lauren Davis Fisher (b. 1984, Cambridge, Massachusetts) to present a two-part work that excises from two gallery walls a space equal to the exact proportions of an alcove beneath a staircase in Bass's Los Angeles studio.

Certain forms recur throughout Bass's work, changing colors and shifting their orientations to complicate and prolong the viewer's engagement with them over time. In the artist's words, "the scene is set on an axis, and that axis is made to shift." Off the Clock animates the transition from work or labor to a space of leisure or play. If the clock represents rigidity, linearity, or someone else's authority, then "off the clock" implies a more personal, open-ended realm that cannot be pinned down. Evoking bodies, but refusing easy identification, Bass's work insists upon multiple readings with elusive conclusions.

Bass's work has been exhibited at Overduin & Co., Los Angeles; Wallspace, New York; Laurel Gitlen, New York; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and Silberkuppe, Berlin; among others. Bass was also recently featured in the 2012 Hammer Museum Biennial, Made in L.A.

Math Bass is organized by Mia Locks, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.

MUSEUM INFO:

Hours: MoMA PS1 is open from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Thursday through Monday. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. ARTBOOK @MoMA PS1 is open from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Thursday through Sunday.

Admission: $10 suggested donation; $5 for students and senior citizens; free for MoMA members and MoMA admission ticket holders. The MoMA ticket must be presented at MoMA PS1 within thirty days of date on ticket and is not valid during Warm Up or other MoMA PS1 events or benefits. MoMAPS1.org | MoMA.org

Directions: MoMA PS1 is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Ave in Long Island City, Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge from midtown Manhattan and is easily accessible by bus and subway. Traveling by subway, take either the E or M to Court Square-23 Street; the 7 to 45 Road-Courthouse Square; or the G to Court Sq or 21 St-Van Alst. By bus, take the Q67 to Jackson and 46th Ave or the B62 to 46th Ave.

MoMA PS1 is one of the largest and oldest organizations in the United States devoted to contemporary art. Established in 1976 by Alanna Heiss, MoMA PS1 originated from The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, a not-for-profit organization founded five years prior with the mission of turning abandoned, underutilized buildings in New York City into artist studios and exhibition spaces. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, as it then was known, became an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art in 2000.

Pictured: Math Bass. Newz! 2014. Gouache on canvas, 28 x 26 in / 71.1 x 66.1 cm.