Brian Mahoney

Untitled #101, from the series "Habitats", 2000-2001 Digital C-print mounted to plexiglas 48" x 58.5"

Untitled #96, from the series "Habitats", 2000-2001 Digital C-print mounted to plexiglas 48" x 59"

Untitled #202, from the series "Habitats", 2002 Digital C-print mounted to plexiglas 48" x 72.5"

Untitled #214, from the series "Habitats", 2002 Digital C-print mounted to plexiglas 48" x 95.5"

Artist Statement

Habitats

I create photographs that explore work habitats. Primarily found in suburban settings, these domains are specifically located in technology and industrial parks. All of the photographs are taken at night, looking in from a window or windows into an office space. Ensuring that the environment is completely empty before taking a photograph, I visit the space multiple times and at different points during the day.

While an office space’s modularity is designed to increase productivity, it also creates a sterile and often hostile and confining environment. I explore the ways employees impose their personality on spaces that seem designed to erase them. My photographs address how we assert our histories and personalities as well as with what kinds of personal artifacts. Each examination is a keyhole through which we peer into someone’s private sphere. I’m fascinated with the kinds of personal objects we have around to keep the blankness at bay. Recording man’s personal attempts to control his surroundings, I look at the age-old conflict of man vs. environment as well as how the two co-exist. This round, we have the added variable of technology in our environment, which compounds employees daily dose of sterility and coldness. Acting as both geometric grid and picture frame, the windows enclose the interiors and evoke a sense of surveillance and value.

In addition to exploring issues of control and assertion, I’m interested in exploring the concept of metamorphosis. By taking the pictures at night, the interiors seem to come alive and glow with an intensity that they lack during daylight hours. It’s almost as if the interiors have been re-invented into a more powerful and emotional existence.

Brian Mahoney

 Education

1999

Rochester Institute of Technology, B.F.A, Rochester, NY

 Selected Exhibitions

2002	“ <init.one>”, Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY
1998	“Depth of Focus”, S.P.A.S Gallery, Rochester, NY “Circumference”, S.P.A.S Gallery, Rochester, NY

Contact Information
82 Butler #4
Brooklyn NY 11231
Email. bmahoney16@comcast.net