Thesis Show Part II at MassArt

Starting on Monday, 4/27, you can see the new work of graduating MFA student, Brian Glaser, at the Bakalar Gallery at MassArt. His show is entitled, "At Least Try to Settle Down," and the accompanying promotional image is of several blocks of wood with what looks like Pinnochio heads on top. (As an aside, the DVD of "Pinnochio" was "released from the Disney vault" this year and, as a father of two toung boys, I have been watching it multiple times over the last few weeks. Pinnochio is actually a really interesting story about morality and what it means to be a "real" boy. I am wondering of those themes will be present in Glaser's show.) Glaser is a thoughtful young artist who has created pieces out of found materials which as an assemblage have a greater social resonance. One example is a large, fluid metal piece that looks like a waterfall which was made out of paperclips that he collected door to door in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The paperclips weren't just any paperclips, they were the paperclips sent by FEMA to fasten the checks to the other claims paperwork. The scale of the piece, which weighs about 300 lbs, gives a sense of how many households were affected. His thesis show runs from 4/27 until 5/9, with a closing reception on Thursday, 5/7, from 6-8 PM.

Mass Confusion

I left the MassArt Benefit Auction on Saturday night a little bewildered. It wasn't because of the art, it was because of the attendees. Whatever I thought I knew about the market, went totally out the window. An unlimited edition by Julian Opie went for four times its price on Opie's webstore (to multiple high bidders!), while amazing pieces, like David Ording's portrait of Lady Agnew (shown here) went for almost half-price. There were no surprises with the usual crowd pleasers in the live auction- Laura McPhee, Abe Morrell, and Ambreen Butt, but downstairs was literally a bargain basement with the exception of a (very) few works that seemed to have been originally priced too low. These included a couple of interesting student works by Jonathan Lewis and Lisa Foti, which were both bought at 150% of suggested price through the "buy it now" option. Many really good pieces that should have easily sold closed without any bids. Some of us got great deals on specific pieces that we had targeted (like the Michael Mazur print I won), but the best strategy would have been to bought in volume, picking up all of the decent work that didn't have bids. How could the same audience overbid for an Opie wall sticker and not place any bids on paintings that could have been won for a fraction of those bids. Were they just unknowledgeable buyers? Is there some twist on charity that I am missing?

Dylan Vitone

I always like to keep an eye on what the MFA, Boston is collecting and their annual report (which came yesterday in my mail) lists their acquisitions over the last year. This year it looks like they acquired four works by a young photographer, Dylan Vitone, including the image shown here of a Homeland Security drill (you can click on the image to see it larger). Dylan Vitone is a MassArt alumnus and he currently teaches photography at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I first saw (and bought) his work at the annual MassArt auction this past April. He makes long panoramic documentary-style pictures by digitally "knitting" individual photos together. There seems to be a narrative (or narratives) in the photos and the process reminds me of a very high tech version of Hockney's photo-collages, except Vitone's work is seemless. He did a series of scenes of South Boston and more recently has been documenting Pittsburgh.

His work was at Photo Miami this year, but the booth's installation was really lackluster. On the outside wall (prime real estate), they enlarged one of his photos (actually of the image we own) and broke it into three separate pieces- totally destroying its impact.

Dylan Vitone has a great website:

http://www.dylanvitone.com/

He is represented by the Oswald Gallery in Jackson Hole, WY and DNJ Gallery in LA. The prints are done in two sizes, a smaller version in an edition of 30 (currently priced at $1,800) and a larger version in an edition of 5 (currently priced at $4,000). You might also be able to pick up his work at the next MassArt auction on 4/4/09.

Bruce Yonemoto gets Ironic at MassArt

We first discovered Bruce Yonemoto at Art Miami last December. His striking portraits of Asian-American men dressed in Civil War costumes posed in classic poses of the era. (Bruce is represented by Alexander Gray Associates in New York)

Having attended the Mass College of Art's benefit auction the past few years, we are on their mailing list and were surprised to recieve an inviation to their visiting artist speaker series -- which featured out favorite Yonemoto photograph as the main image!

We attended the lecture on Wednesday. Hey, this is a great opportunity! We were expecting crowds, but discovered about 25 attendees -- almost entirely students. Bruce spoke for just over an hour and we discovered that he is first and foremost a video and installation artist. Some of his early works consider the materiality of the film screen itself. He has art created out of the material used to make movie theater screens. He also uses a variety of portable movie screens to create a layering effect upon which a movie is shown. Another issue that Bruce examines is the passage of time. He had an interesting piece where he projected a video up into a glass of water. Inside the glass is a sugar cube upon which you can see the video. Of course, as you watch the video, the sugar cube is disolving, becoming increasingly noticable.

I would say that the most common theme throughout Bruce's work is irony. Bruce creates a "screen" made of chopsticks, made supposedly from trees from the rainforest -- upon which he projects images of the rainforest. In another installation, he uses globes, inside which he projects the movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth"

Back to his Civil War series, Bruce lives near a major costume company in California. He rented Civil War costumes which thought might have been used in the Movie "Birth of a Nation" -- a film which is considered to have re-started the KKK. Using costumes which may have been involved in such a racially controversial movie, Bruce places non-white models. Another interesting irony that Bruce points out is how the entire racial discussion around the Civil war is around black and white -- leaving no room for any discussion of other races. In fact, Yonemoto states, that Asian-Americans fought in the Civil War and there is nearly no discussion of this in history books. Beyond the political underpinnings, the photos are quite striking. Although the costumes and poses are quite traditional, your eye is somewhat jarred because it is not expecting to see the Asian-American men in the Civil War costumes, nor are you expecting the vivid color. The strong background colors together with the patterns of the painted floor clothes contribute to a strong graffic impact.