Spring/Break Art Show, Sept 7-12, New York
Spencer Tunick and I brought together our art practices as well as 125 intrepid spirits to create a series of panoramic photographs for Spring/Break Art Show. The settings were a field, an orchard, a forest and the middle of a river. One of the panoramas was turned into a cyclorama, or walk in photograph that is 8 feet tall and 25 feet long, wrapping around you inside an 8′ diameter cylindrical frame covered with mirrors.
You can see a short, 7-minute video created by Rusty Tagliarini / Antiquity Echoes documenting the day at https://youtu.be/ELspnucxvRI.
More information about Spring/Break Art Show at SpringBreakArtShow.com.
“Book of Ours” featured in artnet
“Medievalists have been comparing the smart phone to the Medieval book of hours for years,” curator Sarah Celentano, a medievalist and former staffer at New York’s City Reliquary told Artnet News. “They are about the same size, people use them in public, and they are luxury items.”
Phil Buehler has run with that comparison, surreptitiously snapping photographs of New Yorkers engrossed in their phones and turning the images into stained glass-style images displayed on a smart TV mounted in a wooden frame shaped like an arched church window. Right now, only the video files are for sale, for $1,500 each, but the right offer could potentially buy you the whole installation.
The meditative display, beneath a vaulted “ceiling” of blue lights, is paired with dispatches from QAnon printed in Gothic script that Celentano selected for their biblical cadence. “Smart phones give us access to limitless information, not just prayers,” she said, “but we are still prone to radicalization.”
“Book of Ours” at Spring/Break Art Show
If you’re in New York City this week taking in the art fairs, please strop by my installation at Spring/Break Art Show The theme of this year’s show is Heresy/Hearsay, with a medieval spin.
Book of Ours
An immersive multimedia art installation
highlighting the unsettling correlation between
technology, medieval status symbols & conspiracy theories.
September 10–September 13
SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW
625 Madison Ave (bet 58th & 59th Streets)
Booth 1044
Curator Sarah Celentano’s description:
“This project explores the overlaps of the medieval and the modern with a focus on smartphone technology and online-bred conspiracy groups.
In this chapel of the medieval-modern, photos of smartphone users are transformed into sacred imagery through the medieval medium of stained glass. Accompanying these images are selected communications, or “QDrops,” from the online conspiracy group QAnon. The biblical cadence and heroic language of the QDrops recall passages from the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and show how present-day pocket devices have aided in the radicalization of virtual communities who see themselves as modern crusaders.
Upon its debut in 2007, the iPhone intrigued the medievalist community with its parallels to the book of hours. These prayer books, often illuminated with gold leaf and pigments created from crushed gems, were popular among secular elites between the 13th and 15th centuries. They were often small and portable, and thus acted as both devotional object and personal accessory. The book of hours compares closely to the 21st-century smartphone in terms of scale, costliness, and status symbol. Yet, the purpose of each object could not seem more different, one a means of guiding devotion, the other an invitation to limitless inquiry. But the rise of online conspiracy groups suggests that technology is not a guarantor of social progress.”
Installation, Re:Generation Tulsa 1921-2021
Some photos from my installation on the Paradise Baptist Church for the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. You can see visitors pointing out the burned out shell of the original Paradise Baptist Church, which is one of only three churches remaining in the Greenwood Section of Tulsa.
RE-GENERATION Tulsa 1921-2021
For the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre I’m installing four large panoramic photo murals taken in 1921 onto the exterior walls of Paradise Baptist Church in the Greenwood section of Tulsa. The church was burned down in 1921 and appears in two of the panoramas.
The opening will be on Sunday May 30th and be up until June 30th. Paradise Baptist Church is located at 507 E King St, Greenwood, Tulsa 74106.
The Wall of Lies
Photographs of the “Wall of Lies,” a 110-foot long, 10-foot tall outdoor mural with the 20,000+ lies told by Donald Trump while in office as documented and fact-checked by The Washington Post. It was first installed in Bushwick Brooklyn and then in SoHo Manhattan in the month prior to the 2020 Presidential Election.
Review in Hyperallergic of “Mallrat to Snapchat”
A nice New Year’s surprise with a featured story in Hyperallergic!
Exhibition Featured on “State of the Arts”
Susan Wallner did a wonderful piece about my show at Front Room Gallery for her “State of the Arts” program, which airs on NJTV, WNET and ALL ARTS – a great mix of footage from the gallery, old movie clips and music from 1973, the year the Wayne Hills Mall opened.
