EUTOPIA

Matt Nolen

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Matt Nolen
Rough Trade
The Bowman~Penelec~Megahan Art Galleries
Allegheny College, Meadville, PA [link]

Matt Nolen pieces together vintage, found ceramic objects to re-member disparate experiences. The works tell a story of self-understanding by combining geometric shapes, eyes, faces, body parts, goblets, and collectible figurines. These amalgamations, while at first appearing to be cacophonous, are in fact a violent harmony of joinery which create an external visualization of the architecture of Nolen’s psyche. His vulnerable assemblages point out the ways in which we construct personal truths, and reveal tensions between internal and external representations of self. They are quixotic metaphors for the fragile notion of an immutable reality.

~Ian F. Thomas
images courtesy of the artist

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Darren Lee Miller

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DarrenLeeMiller-pansy

Darren Lee Miller “Pansy” _courtesy of the artist and Revision Space

Darren Lee Miller
SIT STILL: photography, portraits, and doubling
Curated by Nicole Coffineau [link]
Revision Space [link]
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Expressing a primordial innocence of arousal, Miller shifts exteriors internally to provide a surreal, subconscious glimpse into longing, acceptance, and power. With “childhood” propped as simultaneous voyeur and youthful naiveté, the physical players similarly mirror the interchangeable role of giver/receiver. In so doing the work illustrates the power of willingness, irretrievably tangled and consummately fulfilled by the identifier. While the title is a short game pun, “Pansy” deeply proposes questions about one’s understanding of self and how desire is nurtured.

~ Ian F. Thomas

image courtesy of the artist and Revision Space

PLURAL: Matthew King

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09 Matthew King Paintings from the 1970's installation

Matthew King
Paintings from the 1970’s
Grin Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island [link]

I think you mean the 1960’s

A night out with a lover listening to contemporary renditions of the songs of our past, clutching each other’s lustful intentions with a live sound track fulfilling our shallow needs. A good cover band, one that captures the original essence of music is something to experience even though the players are necessarily secondary to the music they copy. King, like many cover bands before him, offers us the flatness of the 1960’s shadowed in clippings of the 70’s  with the simulated currency of the now: nostalgia.

~ Ian F. Thomas
images courtesy of Grin Gallery

Response to ideas in “I think you mean the 1960’s” 

With a blatant attribution to the past the artist co-opts a proven stylization tuned for ready reception: a theoretically safe well-trod territory, which can become either a platform for innovation or a feedback loop of comfortable retro-banality. Nostalgia repackaging co-opts externality as individuality, shifting away from originality into the role of re-contextualization: a risk presuming relevance over inconsequence by re-enacting the paradoxical past-perfect. Equally as interesting, the re-enlivened content that is readily consumed is necessarily (gratefully) lacking the original animating spirit. The zombified pastiche is welcomed with nostalgia’s selective forgiveness and empowered anew by faux-familiarity.

~ Ryder Richards

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Tim Berg & Rebekah Myers

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One of a kind 2-1k

photo by Scott MacClaine

Tim Berg & Rebekah Myers
“Honest to Goodness” @ Art Miami, Dean Project [link]
Miami, Florida

Plunging into the Shallows

Lipstick-polished-superficiality mindfully converges, offering a collapsed view into commodity, individuality and art market hypertrophy. MyersBerg Studios illuminates a vista of desire as currency for society. The seemingly shallow content of kitsch subversively offers the question of what authenticity and individuality may be in regards to object-hood and its multiplicity. “One of a Kind” and it’s 49 miniatures mimic the museum gift shop, the spectacle of Koons, and the consumer desire for a miniature Eiffel Tower. What is a souvenir but one’s perception of mass individuality and a conversation on the breadth of culturally relevant aptitude.

~ Ian F. Thomas
images by Scott MacClaine and Susan Einstine

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Trevor King

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Texas_Seat-1k

Trevor King
Anthem: Big Sound/Big Silence
Installation [2014]

Tensions mount, load roaring engines scream, an indiscernible voice bellows from an announcer as a clandestine passenger waits for his self-inflicted rite-of-passage to manhood.  King’s installation “Anthem: Big Sound/Big Silence” is the visual manifestation of the impotence faced by those searching for external validation.  Here we see a video of a young man losing, almost before the demolition-derby begins.

The illuminated seat acts a sanctuary, reinforcing the physicality of his experience of damnation.  The strewn concrete beer cans become vacillations of drunkenness and another attempt at representing loss, solidified moments, liquid frozen as a realization of time.

~ Ian F. Thomas

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