“Day One” – an Exhibition

The Master of Fine Arts Organization at University of South Florida is holding a group exhibition of new works by second and third-year MFA candidates at the USF William and Nancy Oliver Gallery, August 9-20, 2010. The William and Nancy Oliver Gallery is located at 3801 Holly Dr, Tampa 33620, in the FAS building. The opening reception is Friday, August 13, 2010, 7-9pm. Admission is free, and refreshments will be served. Gallery hours are by appointment.

Exhibiting artists include Maria Bevilacqua, Biff Bolen, Robb Fladry, Ryan Foster, Zak Hemsteger, Megan Hildebrandt, Jay Hollick, Sarah Kelly, Lin Li, Forrest Macdonald, Fran Marquez, Justin Martin, Cindy Mason, Shane Mayberry, Bruce Monroe, Daniel Moore, Ellen Mueller, Chris Otten, Taylor Pilote, Scott Rosenberg, Serhat Tanyolacar, Jordi Williams.

An Obeisance to Marshall Applewhite

An Obeisance to Marshall Applewhite is a hotel room installation included in Showtel 8 at Hotel Biba in West Palm Beach, Florida. Teaming together with Jordi Williams we created a installation that transformed the room into a new realm.

Viewer-participants are invited to become fully emerged in sound, light, video and texture approximating an artificial plant grow-room in space. Plastic plant-clumps and an astroturf floor set an eerie backdrop for a spacey soundscape created live by a spaceman cult leader. Surrounded and disoriented by darkly reflective walls and ceiling, viewers may lounge on shiny pods amid the synthetic landscape to bask with the members of Heaven’s Gate outside of space and time. [April 2010]

Male Chauvinist Pig (Ode to Biff)

Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a blind belief in national superiority and glory. Male chauvinism has occurred probably since the dawn of man and it continues to this day. As a symbol of the penultimate male, imagery of Sean Connery appears in a storefront window with typical male chauvinistic jokes superimposed overtop. [March 2010]

disLocation Tampa

disLocation Tampa was a collaborative exhibit with Justin Martin in February of 2010 at the William and Nancy Oliver Gallery in Tampa, Florida. At the center of the exhibition are 1600 photographs, all pulled from the photosharing site Flickr, all triggered from the keyword Tampa. Each photograph, printed at the common four by six inch size are placed on the wall in stacks. The viewer is invited to remove, replace and reorganize the photos creating new compositions. At the same time, video projections of YouTube videos and current Twitter feeds around the central theme of Tampa are being displayed on the walls. A blank map of Hillsborough County Florida was also on display, viewers were invited to mark on the map in any way they felt necessary in order to respond to the exhibition.

A Twitter Feed and Tumblr Blog were set up for the exhibition as well. [February 2010]

Greed is Good.

A collaborative exhibition as part of [ fladry + jones ] dealing with corporate greed, corruption, and the coming collapse of America as we know it.

At the center of the exhibit was the speech from the 1997 film Wall Street. The speech was slowed down to about 50% of what it was originally recorded at. In doing this, it was hoped that the listener would get a sense of fatness from the speaker, commenting in an undefined way on the greediness that exist in corporations. The far wall of the exhibition space was covered in offest prints of $2 bills. These two-dollar bills were absent of text, heavily stylized and the face of President Thomas Jefferson seemingly scratched out; the color of the bill was red instead of green and yellow instead of white. The $2 bill was chosen because of its uncommon existence as common currency. There was also a stack of these posters sitting on the floor when you enter the space, as viewers were allowed to take home a piece of this currency.

Fifty one dollar bills were placed on the walls of the exhibition space and were marked with a corporation name and the dollar amount of a fine or settlement that the company was forced to pay because of unethical business practices. A PowerPoint presentation of companies’ names and fine amounts were also shown in the space. Lastly, a video of Bernie Madoff being escorted to a police car in handcuffs accompanies the Greed is Good speech. Madoff being the poster child for corporate greed, helped to put a face to the exhibition. [September 2009]