Mason Weiss is a performance-based fiber installation artist who has exhibited in the United States, Germany, and Mexico. Notable exhibitions include Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, GlogauAIR, Berlin, Germany, Dama Gallery in Ventura, California, and Bonita Museum and Cultural Center in San Diego, California. Mason’s awards include scholarships from the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Austria and California College of the Arts as well as a grant from ArtistGrant.org.
With a complexity which incorporates notions of both installation and performance, Mason Weiss creates fiber sculptures which are usually meant to be interactive with an actor and / or suspended in the air. He works in three sets of series which he describes as Bare All, Too Faced, and Kandi. Bare All and similarly themed works reflect distorted self-portraits. In these particular pieces, they are not just constructed from fiber, but also from the artist’s own hair and nails. Too Faced contains suspended installations which appear similar to ancient Mesoamerican sculptures or masks but with unusual animal connotations unknown to such a culture, such as forms similar to pigs, deer, and dragons. The installations known as Kandi seem to be a reflection of psychedelic Rave culture as well as an expression of Minecraft. These particular works appear as if constructed from mostly beads along with some fiber.
Meticulously crafted and with top-tier production values, the installations of Mason Weiss take a performative approach, particularly in photography as he poses along with his sculptures to create conceptual photographs. For example, Mason sits bare-chested with party props and a sculpture mimicking his behavior or sitting in a bed nude holding Bare All sculptures as if they were fluffy teddy bears. Such an interactive approach with his art gives deeper purpose to the conceptual impact of his work, such as how his Too Faced installations are formed in the shapes of masks and appear to be wearable or Mason constructing dragon-like serpent sculptures out of beads which are formed to wrap around an actor’s arm, as if a prop ready to be taken to a rave party. Conceptually, many of the installations function as either a literal or metaphorical depiction of a therianthropy with depictions of beasts replicated with human-like characteristics or crafted in a way to be a costume to fuse with performative behavior.
Too Faced Mask 1 depicts a pale-colored mask with hints of pastels with what appears to have been crafted from beads and fiber. Mythological and imaginative, the piece could be a contemporary totem to resemble a deer or dragon head. With antlers and horns amidst a menacing yet graceful face, much like a Samurai mask, Too Faced Mask 1 reflects Mason’s desire to infuse human behavior with beastly features.
The art of Mason Weiss captures spirited concepts and forms much like a contemporary chimera. His integrative techniques of combining disciplines such as installation, costume design, and performance reflects an artist pushing the boundaries of purposeful form and subject in contemporary art. These totems, self-portraits, and toy-like artworks convey an innocent nature and reveal how contemporary sensory impulses and human psychology may not be much different from animals in form and emotions. Mason Weiss’ works emote an intimate relationship between art and human behavior in his incorporation of installations to create performative conceptual photography. The installations capture a riveting animal spirit which has been contained into enchanted forms for the viewer to play and experiment with beyond just performance, but also as tools of pleasure and toy-like structures.