Hi-Speed Channel Surfing: Deangelo McMahon Jr.

[Hi-Speed Channel Surfing] Deangelo McMahon Jr. On view in the Grace R. Cavnar Gallery February 15, 2024 - April 6, 2024

Q&A with Operations & Exhibitions Manager Jeremy Johnson

About the Exhibition

Hi-Speed Channel Surfing presents new work by Houston-based artist Deangelo McMahon Jr. Through still images that emulate classic television, this exhibition explores mass media, shared memory, and censorship. In the featured paintings, McMahon creates visual white noise with gestures such as cross-hatching and pointillism. These artworks carefully attend to color and scale, bordering trompe-l’œil. In the words of McMahon, this exhibition reflects “the ever-increasing role of technology in present-day life, and seeks to remind the viewer of one’s own humanity amidst it all.”

JJ: In your work, the particulars of the technology are precise, but the images which appear on these screens have interference. The viewer might want to adjust the antenna or turn a knob to improve the picture, but that’s not possible.

DM: In this current iteration of Hi-Speed Channel Surfing, the technology, although highly representational, still operates as an aesthetic abstraction.

Possibly in a future iteration or exhibition the technology will have interactive touch points.

JJ: Why is it important for you to get the look of the machine right?

DM: The machine’s looks aren’t intended to be particularly precise but to be representative of technology of time’s past. These representations of television, that are now obsolete, were once very relevant. It reminds most viewers of what we have lost to time & hopefully suggests an evaluation of the present.

Pray (2023), courtesy of the artist.

JJ: How does your memory play a part in constructing the objects?

DM: Memory plays a considerable role in the construction as well as the painting. The stereo (left,right) speaker design is one I remember vividly in my youth, putting my ear up to one side, isolating the sound and assessing the incomplete audio from the one side. That stereo style speaker shows up in Pray, Please Stand By and Making Money is Expensive. I can also remember putting my face against the glass screen of a television to see the small pixels, or dots, and that is a recurring theme in my painting.

JJ: Do you remember how that glass felt?

DM: Solid, like the glass of cookware or a Coca-cola bottle. There was a distinct sound to tapping the screen’s glass. The manufacturing was certainly different from current television sets.

JJ: Not that you can necessarily break this apart evenly, but how much of your work is about nostalgia and how much is it about the future?

DM: I try to retain a practical perspective when assessing past nostalgia and the future. The future is of greater significance to me but nostalgia and the past is a way in which I express certain concerns.

JJ: What are the ways design shows up in our everyday lives that we might not be aware of?

Money is Expensive (2023), courtesy of the artist.

DM: Scrolling. Scrolling is a powerful design feature that allows us to consume vast and varying types of information in a very short span of time. We are channel surfing perpetually.

JJ: What is the importance of distortion in your work?

DM: Distortion in my work is complex. Blurring, warping and adding noise are a few ways I achieve this. I may use distortion in the form of blurring to express motion, to imply a liveliness or life to the image.

Blurring might also help me bring attention to an area in the painting. I may warp other portions of the image to express technological imperfection, or loss of signal, like that in analog tv.

Noise could express a fogginess similar to that in memory or tv signals. There is also aesthetic value to the distortion. It helps me add juxtaposition, repeat areas, play with scale – it allows me to explore and find interesting compositions.

JJ: What do you think about the messages we receive when we’re able to tune in to mass media?

Please Stand By (2023), courtesy of the artist.

DM: That we should be responsible. Always question our empathy and consideration for others as well as ourselves.

JJ: How do we be responsible with mass media?

DM: Be critically present during the consumption of it. Investigate the ideas being suggested.

JJ: In addition to interference or technological malfunction, your work also seems to touch on censorship.

Why is it important for you to depict censorship in your work?

DM: To provoke the viewer to ask within themselves, “Why? What would warrant such censorship?”

One of the primary objectives of Hi-Speed Channel Surfing was to remind the viewer of one’s own humanity. That includes possible limiting factors to humanity.

JJ: You are able to make art that uses the aesthetics of censorship like brackets, and blacked out screens. It becomes part of your/our visual culture. The original content is replaced with this new “content”.

How is humanity reflected in the look and feel of censorship?

DM: Due to its prevalence around us, humanity will find ways to create utility from the obstacles censorship creates.

People are naturally adaptive creatures. We learn from our environment and sometimes the medium itself becomes the message.

We begin to function like the machines we engage with. The coding style involved in restricting content becomes content we consume and reflect back.

An ironic side note: People have shared their viewing experience of the show to social media. There’s one painting I’ve yet to see photographed - Image Not Available In Your Country. Was the painting taken literally? It seems to be an unintentional performance art at play.

Image Not Available In Your Country (2023), courtesy of the artist.

JJ: Are there types of things you have in mind when the content is blocked?

DM: The topic of censorship is not simply a personal social critique but censoring my own painting implies self-censorship.

Whether learned or willful, I feel people have become accustomed to censoring themselves. The aim of the exhibition was for us as people to evaluate ourselves & the world around us. LOOK AT US.