I describe my work as "picture-writing" in that I consider the drawings and sculptures I make to be dramatic works, more like elaborate story-books than straightforward depictions of real-world objects. I'm less concerned with the traditional aesthetics of beauty or form than I am with creating a stimulating flow of impressions, and I want people to "read" my pictures like they read one of their favorite novels over and over again, always finding details they hadn't noticed before or seeing some part of the tale that's presented from a new perspective. This storytelling is quite basic for me as an artist and a person -- I am not given to filtering out what's unusual or disturbing from the impressions I receive from the wider world. I sometimes feel that if I couldn't express myself through my artwork these impressions would fill me up like an empty barrel in a rainstorm! And so I cultivate them and try to develop a way to express the elaborate scenes they suggest through a visual language that's natural to me.
Everyday spoken language itself plays a big role in my work. While I depict many of the peculiar dramas of human relationships, the use of masks and mirrors to deflect and conceal, I also include a great deal of wordplay, showing the literal words people often utter in the pictorial story, and even mundane and trivial things make their way into the composition when they happen to catch my attention.
My creative process involves lots of visual note-taking. I love the immediacy of drawing and the fact that I can do it anywhere. The pen is always moving when I work, and sometimes I don't even realize what I'm putting down. My finished pieces evolve from my notes in an organic and improvised way. They are black and white, typically 24x30 inches and may take a month or more to complete. Their content is vivid, intense, extreme and sometimes scary, populated with creatures that are like the unseen within the obvious: animals, half-humans, imaginary hybrid beings in a constant state of change. These figures represent basic emotional states (fear, joy, anger, grief, surprise, disgust, etc.) and relationships(love, trust, greed, care, etc.).
My influences are many and varied. I love the intricate beauty and deep level of storytelling depicted in Tibetan Thangka paintings. The emotional intensity in the work of Francisco de Goya affected me greatly when I first encountered 'The Sleep of Reason Begets Nightmares' as a student. Among contempory artists, I am very moved by Neil Farber's colorful and richly populated paintings and the narrative complexity in the work of Marcel Dzama. I'm very intrigued by how all of these artists do not shy away from presenting difficult and even gruesome material. Using such material in art-making somehow feels very honest to me, even though I consider myself to be a person who isn't entirely comfortable encountering the same in my everyday life.
During my recent residency at Montrose Farm in Maryland, I was inspired to start creating sculptures based on my compositions, smaller pieces capturing single scenes and memorable characters from the complexity of the large-scale drawings. Kathleen Vance, co-director of the Frontroom Gallery in Brooklyn, New York (who coordinated my residency) writes the following in a recent press release: "Sascha Mallon's presents in this exhibition a new series of ceramic sculptures that are inspired by figures from her intensive drawing works. Her time at the residency allowed for the development of two-dimensional figures to 3-d representations. Imagined as objects discovered in the forest, these delicately formed pieces are encased in selected wooden boxes to give the impression that they are mementos from a lost world. Mallon's work, in both her drawing practice and this new series of sculptural works create a narrative from history: history of symbiosis of man and nature, but also history of human imperfection, bringing to life protagonists of stories about greed, fear, love, hurt, emptiness and beauty."
A.M. Richard, writing in the press release for the 2007 exhibition "Winter Wonderland" at the A. M. Richard Gallery in New York, described my work in the following way: "Sascha Mallon presents a surrealistic narrative in her large scale drawings. In the traditon of automatism no line is straight. The free-flowing composition is crowded with a multitude of dark vignettes set in what appears to be a cross section of an ant colony, each section telling a story, each connected, disconnected and entwined through a swirl of images emanating from tubes, slides and various organic forms, for example snowball factories, small atrophied creatures (some racing on skis) and mounts of curious flakes and machines people Ms. Mallon's disturbing interpretation of winter..."