JEAN MASON  | Hopes, Dreams and Reality

September 4 - October 31, 2026

Bruno David is pleased to present Hopes, Dreams and Reality, a new video work by St. Louis-based artist Jean Mason. The exhibition opens with a public reception on Friday, September 4, 2026, and remains on view through October 31, 2026, at the gallery’s New Media Room on Forsyth Boulevard, downtown Clayton, MO.

Speaking on his latest project, Mason shared: “To create this video work, I turned to a modern collaborator: artificial intelligence. I swapped out physical cameras and color palettes for my own imagination. I simply fed detailed descriptions of my mental imagery to my AI companion, and it helped me manifest those visuals. It was the ultimate assistant—tireless, relentlessly polite, and ready to work at any hour of the day.”

The video is a made-up tale about four generations of a mythical family. The first generation we see are John and Mary in their baby pictures.  They wed in 1963 and a dream comes true for Mary when she delivers twins whom they name Mary and Sam. As Mary and Sam watch their children grow, they see them imagining futures in MLB baseball, professional ballet or entertaining huge audiences as a violin virtuoso or a famous soprano. The dreams that kids, and adults, dream. They see (and mostly hear) their twins start a band in the garage and ultimately go on to find their own mates and have their own children, who dream the same dreams and hope the same hopes as they did. After John has met the fate that awaits us all, we see a happy surprise for any grandmother: the arrival of a great grandchild. We then see the great grandmother alongside her husband and a family bound by love and respect.

In the end, it is our memories that live in us all.

Jean Mason, a native of Saint Louis, was born in 1946 and has immersed himself in the art of photography and video for over 60 years. Mason’s extensive experience with motion picture cameras primarily occurred in the ‘60s to the ‘80s, where he focused on sports photography and videography, significantly influencing the way sporting events are televised today.