Katherine McMahon
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Katherine McMahon is an American multidisciplinary artist based in London. She was previously based in New York City and is the former Creative Director at ARTnews magazine. Her work has appeared at Guild Hall Museum (East Hampton, NY), Peter Mendenhall Gallery (Pasadena, CA), and SITE:Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY). In early 2018, she participated in a solo residency at the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton, NY. In 2020, she mounted The Roast Beef is the Story, a presentation of paintings that thematically explored the American diner, displayed in the windows of the abandoned Silver Lining Diner in New York during the COVID lockdowns. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, ARTNET, and TimeOut New York.
With this new suite of paintings, McMahon uses the neon sign as subject matter to broadly explore the lifecycle of objects that function in visual culture as signifiers of wants, needs, and desires, examining how their shift from ubiquity to novelty and nostalgia reflects changes in society at large.
In their original use, the neon sign emitted hedonistic undertones in outdoor advertising to promote everything from food to gambling to sex, activating the brain’s orienting reflex and encouraging action through color psychology, motion, and light. Aside from their literal messaging, their hum and glow contributed to the look and feel of urban landscapes in the 20th century. They were once much more than signage—they were seductive, sensorial triggers.
These paintings celebrate neon’s golden age while taking a wider lens to the way culture facilitates the transition of mainstream objects to cultural artifacts in the 21st century. Furthermore, this series explores the literal messaging of neon signs, framing words and phrases as a historical record that reflects shifting priorities in consumerism and culture from the past to the present.
In October 2025, she will present Open Late, a pop-up exhibition of neon sign paintings at God’s Own Junkyard, which houses the largest collection of neon signs in Europe. These paintings explore the inverted symbology and psychological effect of presenting the sentimental, sculptural neon sign object via the two-dimensional, flattened medium of painting. Drawing inspiration from the writer Mark Fisher’s concept of hauntology—the idea that the present is haunted by lost futures—McMahon considers the complexity of the neon sign’s contemporary identity as a material casualty of the 20th century.
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