Giovanni’s Room is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by artist Jason Mason. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery in Los Angeles.

When I was little, my granddad’s basement was filled with paintings of the dinosaur extinction event. On one wall, a T-rex ran from raining ash; on another, raptors scattered past pools of magma; and way deep in the corner, a Brontosaurus reeled from the asteroid sky. The walls in there were charcoal black, too, so at night, lit by just a single lamp, the paintings felt like dioramas in a natural history museum -- fiery portals floating in space, access points to a land beyond.

“What happened next,” I’d ask my mom, “after all the dinosaurs were gone?” She didn’t know, she’d say, and that bothered me -- not knowing -- so I bugged her about it until one night she said something new: “We happened next.” My eyes grew wide. Yes, I thought, that’s it: Eventually, we happened. We humans appeared on planet earth. Quickly, however, the realization spun me into an existential bind, because if we were next, I figured, then we were also next. The fire was headed our way.

Now, twenty-some-odd years later, I still wonder about that fire, about how to handle it. When I look at Jason Mason’s work, though, I see clues.

In Mason’s paintings, the fire once heading our way has already arrived, and it’s much cooler than expected. The skies are smooth, the waves blue, the lyrics cursive; figures are nowhere to be found. Friction, it seems, has come and gone, leaving behind only innocuous traces of doom. In Tire Wave (2026), yes, a tire floats in the ocean, but what an ocean; in Spied Camera (2006), once-vigilant surveillance cameras look elsewhere, receding into the sun- washed afternoon; even in the show’s most turbulent painting, Sci-Fi Luxury or Bonestell’s Chandelier (2021-2026), bubbling lava finds itself tempered by the calm glow of a planet on the horizon, whose own natural authority is complicated by the surrealist kick of the chandelier floating above it.

And then there’s the question of time. Sci-Fi Luxury, specifically, reinterprets Chesley Bonestell’s The Earth Is Born (Beginning of the World), which appeared in part on the cover of LIFE in 1952, an issue Mason recalls seeing in his father’s magazine collection when he was young. By reworking the image decades later, and by exhibiting it alongside paintings that unsettle modernity’s leftovers -- nails, tires, soda cans -- Mason leaves us wondering when. Sure, Bonestell’s work might’ve depicted the beginning, but what about Mason’s? Does it also imagine a genesis, or does it feel more like a reflection of the present?... Perhaps a vision of the end?

In fine-tuning these slippery tensions and knocking us out of time, Mason’s paintings earmark the apocalypse for another day. They buy us a moment to listen close to the rhythms we create, to find wonder in whatever fire comes next.

- Text by Greg Jenkins

Jason Mason’s works confront visitors with the obvious precision, technical skill, and intelligence of a painter who has been working at this accomplished level for decades. His paintings present us with capably observed riddles that are worked out, and played out, as objects themselves. Through his painting — playful, and dead serious — Mason reflects obliquely on what purpose is.

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Jason Mason was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1971. He is a self-taught artist who studied under Ed Ruscha for many years. His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the US and Asia. Mason has had recent exhibitions with Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The Journal, New York, NY. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.