Patrick Carlin Mohundro
Hot Dog Bun Hammer Nail
4/14 - 4/23/2023
Vernissage: 4/14, 6-10pm
Barely Fair
Chicago, IL
For Barely Fair 2023, Lonesome Dove is proud to present new work by Brooklyn-based artist Patrick Carlin Mohundro. For this presentation, the artist has created stained glass flower petals for specific, paired objects: the hot dog, bun, hammer, and nail.
Mohundro’s work is dangerous business. Everything is always falling apart, and this presentation is no exception. Shards of colorful vintage glass, wrapped in copper tape and soldered, encircle objects that are rarely even considered objects, much less considered at all. They stand, lean, and pierce precariously. They make break or break your skin.
What are these objects alone? What are they together? A single nail is like a pigeon in New York — one among millions, you’ll probably never see this particular bird again, if you notice her at all. Hammers, you get a little more familiar with. My homeschooled friend used to steal hotdog buns from their family’s pantry and slather them with homemade icing, a forbidden cake sculpted from a whole wheat upbringing. As a child, I myself would wrap an ice cold hot dog with one paper towel and eat it alone in my bedroom.
But they usually come in pairs. The hammer strikes the nail. The hotdog fills the bun. The nail gets pounded. The bun encircles the dog. Dying for drama, we project power dynamics into their relationships.
Mohundro further complicates the hotdog, bun, hammer, and nail’s relationships by using glass to turn each object into a simple, naively drawn flower. Stained glass is metal holding in objects that want to flow, in service to beauty. The head of the nail easily becomes a flower. The hammer is more complicated. The bun lays frozen, open in expectation, while the hot dog stands erect next to it. With the gesture of adding petals, the projected hierarchy of dominance and submission is flattened, and the booth becomes a dramatically staged scene wherein each actor is relating to its counterpart in a new way.
In Sleeping Beauty, the fairies help Philip escape the guards from Maleficent’s castle by transforming their arrows into flowers, in midair. Similarly, in a buddhist parable, Thich Nhat Hanh relates: ’The night before his enlightenment, the Buddha was attacked by Mara, the Tempter, the Evil One. Mara and his army of demons shot thousands of arrows at the Buddha, but as the arrows neared him, they turned into flowers and fell harmlessly at his feet.’ The Buddha recognized the true nature of the arrows, and transformed them into their reality. Mohundro does the same. These are crowns for the temporary, the rotting, the molding, the dripping, the greasy to the touch. Each is given their moment in the sun.