MASTER MAHAN


In Master Mahan, Lazaros acts simultaneously as folklorist and artist in an investigation into superstitions and legends specific to the locale of the Sanpete Valley. In part one of the exhibition, the folklorist has gathered evidence of a Sanpete Valley sighting of Master Mahan – the wandering Biblical Cain who was cursed to roam the earth until the end of days after slaying his brother Abel and being banished from paradisiacal Eden.

In the second half of the exhibition, the artist examines the formal and theoretical affinities between the sacred geometry of the quilt block and modernist hard edge abstraction. Lazaros has placed quilt barn paintings within the top floor of the historic 19th Century Mormon proto-communist granary, while simultaneously installing the latter on a pastoral structure which is situated on the property of the institution - as well as throughout the Sanpete Valley. Quilt barn paintings have genesis with Amish hex paintings, which folklorists believe are affixed to barns in an effort to ward-off evil or unwanted beings from the life and property of the creator.