Gordon Massman: Telegrams from the Sun

April 1 - April 21, 2023 | Reception: April 6, 2023, 6-8 PM

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Agora Gallery is pleased to announce Telegrams From the Sun, a solo exhibition of recent oil paintings by Massachusetts-based artist Gordon Massman. The show features nine impressively-scaled works in the artist’s distinctive abstract expressionist style. About the title Massman explains, “The sun alludes to both the light overhead and, more importantly, the brilliant hard truths within the individual psyche.”

At 34, Massman experienced a monumental collapse that shook the very foundations of his being and deep-seated beliefs. His old world irreparably shattered, he embarked on a life-long quest for truth with the help of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and Freudian psychoanalysis. Over time, he learned to identify truth with an internal eye that lives deep within us. This eye–the dispeller of lies, the great destroyer–is our sun. Casting its scorching rays with unforgiving brutality, the sun’s inquisitive flames expose the bare flesh of the artist’s soul with unabashed candor. In his own words, “all the repressed internal demons broke through a false floor in my neck and burst into my brain.”

Massman’s paintings are his truth–anguished, chaotic, psychotic, achingly vivid and pulsating with life. They are a jumble of furiously concatenated loops, forms chasing after one another in a euphoric rush for pleasure, orgasmic explosions of jubilation, manic obsessions. Blazing tongues of red hit our pupils with burning intensity, as if looking directly at a solar eclipse. Engaging in a play of push and pull with twirls of cerulean, ultramarine, and aqua blue, the hot tones form a cohesive narrative that guides us seamlessly from the front space to the mezzanine area. The experience is intoxicating as it is exquisite.

Cutting through delusion Massman embarks on his personal journey to salvation. He says “I have discovered that for all its sensual qualities the physical external world is valueless without emotional enlightenment. It’s the sun of our own unique authenticity that imbues the indifferent world with beauty. It’s the depth of perception that saves us from the oblivion of self-ignorance.”