By John Mallett, Courtesy of Thomas Ling
Unatomy #89
After graduating from Upper Arlington High School (UAHS) in 1999, classmates John Mallett and Thomas Ling went their separate ways. For two decades, they didn’t hear from one another. That is, until Ling opened an art gallery in Brooklyn, New York, and remembered his talented childhood friend.
“I knew Tom in high school. I always liked and respected him, but I can’t say we really hung out,” Mallett says. “On Instagram, I would post my artwork on occasion and over the months, I guess enough accumulated that he bothered to reach out, or at least it lined up with him opening the gallery.”
So, the pair looked for – and found – a way to collaborate. From June 3-July 8 this year, Ling featured Mallett’s Unatomy series, showcasing numerous paintings from the more than 200-piece series that Mallett had been working on since 2015. For each piece, Mallett painted figures that, though based on human models, have intentionally skewed features to deviate from reality and create a preternatural figure and a feeling in the viewer.
The curator
Courtesy of Thomas Ling
Ling’s fascination with art began when his father gave him a camera and he began taking pictures for the Barrington Elementary School student paper. He was hooked for life after he took a photography class at UAHS his freshman year.
“This was before digital, so it blew my mind to see images come to life out of nowhere, it seems like,” Ling says. “So, I was thrilled to be able to take the intro photography – dark room one – with Miss McGinty.”
Ling studied art at The Ohio State University and developed an understanding of how to study art. During that time, he was in a long-distance relationship with a student at New York University and began taking regular trips for a taste of the Big Apple.
“I felt like New York was kind of this cool secret,” he says. “It made me feel excited about art and learning about the galleries. And the galleries in Columbus as well. It gave me this sense that they’re doing something serious.”
While searching for a way to break into the art scene, his girlfriend was working at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and got him an interview.
Ling aced the interview and would eventually lead the department for more than a decade before hearing a new calling.
“(I) just decided after 14 years I wanted to step out and try something different,” Ling says. “And I had this opportunity to work at David Zwirner Gallery.”
He hardly interacted with Zwirner personally, but he learned what it looks like behind the scenes to run a gallery, and felt he was ready to take a bold leap into his own space.
When Ling and his wife, Ivy Chen, found an open storefront in Brooklyn that they loved, they opened the Thomas VanDyke Gallery. VanDyke was Ling’s grandmother’s surname, and he is in the process of legally changing his name to reflect this Dutch heritage.
The artist
Photo by Ray LaVoie
John Mallett
Though Mallett has a laid-back nature, he always seems to be thinking and analyzing.
His unique perspective on art and the world around him have led Mallett through a wide range of artistic endeavors all over the world – from working on CGI in films to creating his own series of comics – all of which led back home to committing his creative energy to the uncanny figures in Unatomy.
After graduating from UAHS, like Ling, Mallett pursued a career in art. He took some classes at Columbus College of Art and Design, but unlike Ling, “it didn’t stick” with Mallett.
A few years later, he went to The Danish Academy of Digital, Interactive Entertainment, where he learned 3-D modeling and textures to become a CG artist. He joined Illumination Studios’ animation team as a texture artist and worked on The Lorax.
“In computer graphics, you start with a lot of simple shapes,” he says. “Most geometry starts with a cube or a sphere that you’re subdividing. And I think that fondness of primitive shapes really carries over.”
He eventually found himself in Chicago working at an international creative agency called The Mill, where he would join life drawing classes with a colleague.
“I would do a 45-minute study, and when I came home, I’d have a decent portrait of somebody, but it was still a little bit boring to me,” Mallett says.
So he started to disconnect his art from reality and worked more with fantastical forms inspired by the models in the classes. Then he brought an MDF (plywood composite) board to class and used it as a canvas.
“Based off all this practice I had amassed in sketchbooks deforming this character, I’m like, ‘I’m just gonna see how this translates to the board,’” he says. “And I specifically remember the first one getting this huge rush of energy to having this one image versus the sketchbook lifestyle I’m used to.”
This energy rush still drives Mallett to this day.
Unatomy’s more than 200 paintings took him eight years to amass. Mallett’s commitment to the series after so many individual works, and so many years, is due to the “free adrenaline” he says he receives from long-term projects rather than small-scale ones.
Mallett returned to Upper Arlington about six years ago to take care of his parents full-time, so he has been able to freely work on Unatomy pieces as an escape from reality and caretaking.
“His art is literally his therapy,” Ling says, “and he generally keeps it to himself, but when he’s creating and using his mind, that’s what connects him to the world and to other people.”
The exhibition
1 of 5
By John Mallett, Courtesy of Thomas Ling
Unatomy #194
2 of 5
By John Mallett, Courtesy of Thomas Ling
Unatomy #214
3 of 5
By John Mallett, Courtesy of Thomas Ling
Unatomy #164
4 of 5
By John Mallett, Courtesy of Thomas Ling
Unatomy #119
5 of 5
By John Mallett, Courtesy of Thomas Ling
Unatomy #84
“I’ve had John’s work in mind my whole career,” Ling says. “I never thought I’d open my own gallery, but when I did, he’s the first person I contacted about doing a show.”
Ling reached out to Mallett on Instagram, saying he loved his work and was opening his own space and wanted to feature his work. He visited Mallett over Thanksgiving last year.
“(I was) knocking on his door saying, ‘I know you have art in there. I want to get it out,’” Ling says.
“John is a prolific artist, constantly creating. His basement is packed with fully developed and finished comic book series (and) animated projects. Crates full of paintings, character studies and creative endeavors worthy of any gallery,” he says.
Mallett, however, was not an easy sell. He is extremely protective of his work, and says he doesn’t care much for the attention. He doesn’t believe he’ll become a well-known artist during his lifetime – and he’s OK with that.
“He’s the kind of person I think of as a true artist, he just doesn’t care about the attention,” Ling says. “I’ve always had this philosophy that the best of anything is probably unknown.”
The pair worked closely for months arranging and rearranging the Unatomy exhibition. Mallett had written on the back of many of the pieces he’s made for the series, so the two worked to showcase both the paintings and the writing on the back for three of the entries.
His writings are carefully thought out, and range from a few sentences about his process or his setting to full paragraphs detailing the emotions that came through in the piece.
“If the stuff is ever unearthed, the last thing I want is some historian pretending like they knew me,” Mallett says.
Mallett was also worried the writing would distract from the art, but says Ling eased his concerns; the explanations made the works more compelling, Ling told him.
“The most surprising thing to me is how much accidental mood shows up in these,” Mallett says. “The less conscious, the better.”
Several pieces in Unatomy sold, though Mallett was hesitant to let them go, and every copy of the book they had printed compiling Mallett’s Unatomy series sold out.
While Unatomy is no longer on view at the Thomas VanDyke Gallery, Ling hopes to one day feature another of Mallett’s exhibitions. You can find Mallett’s work on his Instagram @mallett.john and on his website www.john-mallett.squarespace.com.
“The whole thing was a bit of a whirlwind where I didn’t really appreciate (it),” Mallett says. “I didn’t almost have time for those feelings. Now, in retrospect, it’s revealing little gems from the experience. Like this book, I’m glad I have this, … it’s a physical representation of the show. I would be making this stuff in silence if Tom didn’t orchestrate this.”
Tyler Kirkendall is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at tkirkendall@cityscenemediagroup.com.
