Review of a presentation by Lance Winn

On Monday January 29th I attended a talk by Lance Winn about the things he does in the art world. Lance Winn showed slides of a work depicting a Buddhist Priest setting his self on fire in order to protest the Vietnam War. This work was taken from a famous photo and if you look closely you can see a resemblance to this photo in this work which is made of lawn ornaments. I am not sure that Winn has his history right for this piece, I seem to remember that President John Kennedy had the CIA assassinate President Diem a Buddhist who was resisting an American buildup in Vietnam in order to install General Ky a Catholic who was more pliable to the plans of the Americans to enlarge the war. I believe that the priest was protesting the loss of power by the Buddhist majorly to the Catholic minority who have ruled Vietnam since the days of the French, as intermediaries. This has happened so many times as Western Colonial Masters pitted one group of natives against another in order to oppress the Third World.
Winn said that he uses text a lot in his works,that ideas interest him and that they create action. In a silk-screen on glass work depicting a woman who jumped off the Empire State Building and landed on a car Winn described suicide as a powerful choice. I liked the way he heated the glass and let it sag in order to give the work a 3-d appearance. The Atomic Clock work was interesting to me. I liked the way Winn used Three layers rotating in order to make a temporary image. The exploding plane wall sconce was sick, I would not want it hanging in my home. The project to scan the walls for bombs was a waste of time as far as I an concerned. I was very interested in the works that Winn produced by tracing words and then laser cutting the tracings and assembling them into a three dimensional form Lance Winn left us with the question, "can art talk back to the image", something to think about.

Review of consumed by Melissa Dean at the Boyden Gallery

On January 24Th I attended an event at the Boyden Gallery. Melissa Dean was showing her installation, consumed, a work dealing with consumerism. Dean takes many of the elements used in her works from the Target and Ikea catalogs and cuts or stamps them out of paper.As a man who hates to shop, married to a woman who loves to shop, this body of works has some meaning to me. There are only two places that I would enjoy shopping at, a large music store where I can try out some of the guitars and the Harley Davidson dealer. I never have the time to go to these places, my wife on the other hand shops all weekend every weekend,if it gives you pleasure go for it although I don't understand how, it is like torture to me.
I thought Dean's work "Quantifying goodwill and other intangible assets" was interesting. I looked like a graph of some sort of data this work occupied an entire wall of the gallery. The "data points" were composed of stamped out pictures of Black and Decker blenders. Dean olso used giant dolies as a base of some of her works.
I thought that dean's work on the adjoining wall, a list of the twelve catagories listed on the Target website in giant brail symbols was very original. This work is composed of many smaller cutouts of various consumer items but the detail gets lost in the size of the work. I agree with Dean that there is too much consumerism and that we don't need so much junk in our lives but I think I am a part of a small minority with that viewpoint. I know a lot of people who are shopaholics and they gain a great amount of "utility",( economics speak), from their buying.

After reading this assignment I find two strong themes in these works. The use of nudity to make a statement and the fear/loathing of male attributes. Viewing Orlan's seventh performance-operation makes me wonder if Orlan is undergoing this event as a protest against the pressure exerted on women by a male oriented society to look young and beautiful. I believe that women use their looks in their efforts to gain higher status in the organisations they belong to just as men use their strength. I have observed women investing considerable effort on their looks even when they are in a totally female environment, such as an elementary school or an office staffed only by females. The use of inserts in this event could pose health risks in the future. These inserts can also shift position and it seems to me that the appearance of youth gained from surgery can be to temporary to justify the pain. More of our society are practicing body alterations this makes me fear for our civilisation when people start monkeying around with their DNA.
Stelarc might have been one of the first to be suspended with hooks but now this seems to be becoming popular. They say the suspended person experiences erotic sensations from the pain.
There seems to be a lot of hate directed against men in some of these works. Louise Bourgeois, Heli Rekula, andEgle Rakauskaite seem to have a message of either open hostility to men or a wish to be apart from them. There seems to be a huge reservoir of pent up anger in the feminist art community, I am at a loss to understand what the world has done to them to make them so angry.