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.