Matt Mahurin

Mahurin has spent the last 30 years creating political and social illustrations for Time, Newsweek, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The London Observer and New York Times Op-Ed pages and magazines; photo essays on The Texas Prison System, Abortion Clinics, Mental Hospitals, Haiti, Belfast, and Nicaragua; publishing three collections of fine art photography; and directing music videos for U2, Tom Waits, David  Byrne,  Ice  -T,  Tracy  Chapman,  Metallica,  Sting,  REM,  Lou  Reed,  and  Joni Mitchell. His films and photographs are in collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

“Born in a hospital perched on a seaside cliff in the surf capital  of  Santa  Cruz,  California,  sixty  years  ago,  I began an adventure that nurtured my early artistic calling. My teenage years took me to the suburban sprawl of southern California where I made the decision to  make  a  living  making  art.  After  paying  my  way through Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design by creating  political  illustrations  for  The  Los  Angeles Times, I left my west coast nest for the wide open opportunity of New York City—and the world beyond. Thirty years later, I have returned to my beloved homeland to be reborn as a middle-age butterfly.

CALIFORNIA SON took over ARCANE Space as artist Matt Mahurin presented hundreds  of  paintings,  illustrations,  photographs,  filmworks,  writings,  and  objects  in  a visual timeline of a life and career spanning multiple mediums and diverse subject matter. Not only a reflection of a long career, CALIFORNIA SON is a celebration of all that is possible in seeking that next opportunity for inspiration, change, and growth as an artist and a person.