December 8, 2008

PRESS RELEASE

 

Iao PROJECTS

925 EAST 900 SOUTH SUITE 40

SALT LAKE CITY UT 84105

T. 801.879.1971

http://www.iao-gallery.com/index4.html

 

SHALL WE BEGIN?
Amy Caron, Jeff Faerber, Mason Fetzer, Donald Fodness, Matt Glass, Eric Hart, Megan Hildebrandt, Jordan Jensen, Sibyll Kalff, Mindy Kober, Michelle Kurtz (Circlegal), Joshua Luther, Eric Osborne, Cat Palmer, Arthur Patching (guest artist from Iao: Acme Burger Company), Kurtz + peng, Mark Phelan, Brendan Rogers, Jamison Sarteschi, Brett Sykes, RoByn Thompson, Kay Tuttle, Stacey Wexler, Barry Wolfryd, Catherine Lisa Wong, Jan Wurm
December 19, 2008 – January 10, 2009

In Michael Haneke’s brilliant masterpiece “Funny Games,” the question “Shall We Begin?” is threatened by one of the supposed villains to the victimized family of the elite Austrian classes. Curator Albert Wang decided to use this veiled phrase as an act of defiance against the social order of the American contemporary market, particularly which is embedded within the predominant New York and Los Angeles scenes. Iao PROJECTS, which is an upstart conceptual art space located in the heart of Salt Lake City, is bucking the trends by unleashing its first physical exhibition within the confines of its 108 square foot gallery with its expansive show that challenges the viewer’s imagination with its fascinating array of artwork that ranges from conceptual sculptures to more traditional works on paper.

 

“Shall We Begin?” attacks the establishment with its mind-boggling salon-style presentation of twenty-six artifacts from each of the represented artists from the Iao PROJECTS and Iao PROJECTS Flatfiles (emerging artists). Each one of the pieces is provocative in its subtle way, suggesting that the most obvious interpretation is not the one which fits expectations like a mismatched glove. The artists range in geography from Germany to Brooklyn to Baltimore to Los Angeles to various places in Utah.

 

Some random selections from this particular archive include Donald Fodness’ redacted instruction book “The Arts” transformed using the techniques of Dada into a hilarious visual joke that combines both Rube Goldberg and the crazy antics of sexual puns like James Joyce. By titling this penned collage of mechanical objects like robots with human fluids and parts like snot and limbs, the artist suggests that the driving force behind “the arts” is an endless sense of eyeful playfulness and a bold fearlessness to experiment with the laboratory of popular culture ideas tied into a riddle. The juxtaposition of the deconstructing joke on the left meshing seamlessly with its drastically well-drawn counterpart on the right becomes a surefire to elicit laughter from the viewer while reminding him or her that thoughtfulness is at the heart of intellectual self-denigration.

 

Another well-crafted example that also illustrates the exhibition’s rather bipolar nature is Megan Hildebrandt’s more historically focused painting “Brigham Young, the most famous polygamist of all time, leads his 16 child-bearing wives on an exedus through the desert.” In desultory fashion, the artist deconstructs the self-fulfilling history that the Mormons have written within their annals by her brilliant use of scale. Within the work, one can see the gigantic man of Brigham Young towering like a monument over his many spouses. One asks whether this is a feminist slant in terms of suggesting that women have an unacknowledged role in supporting the agenda of the patriarchy within the early Latter-Day leadership. Despite the feminist overtones, Hildebrandt’s humor in the rather static nature of the masculine counteracting the dynamic nature of the feminine becomes a rather fascinating attempt to rewrite the commonplace annals of church history while injecting a postmodern sociology into the aura of Prophet Young’s power structure.

 

Other presented works within this group show include Jeff Faerber’s edited appropriation of a journalist’s photograph of an Iraqi child suffering in wartime pain, Stacey Wexler’s deadpan cartoon of a revolver being pointed towards clinched teeth like a Caroll Dunham satire, Brett Sykes’s lovely blowups using the digital camera of his Motorola RAZR of cropped television screens into epic billboards that cloud the interpretation rather than cater to advertising clichés. These and the many other fascinating works of the exhibition all demonstrate the bipolar nature of art where one interpretation is offered as a superficial explanation upon a first glance while filling its visual substance with a secondary, perhaps even contradictory meaning. The inherent tension manifested within each individual work becomes a crafty act of self-deconstruction/self-destruction through its assault on commonplace ideas.

 

Like Borges’ mazes, the finest riddles are the ones with open answers. Iao PROJECTS serves as the center of leading contemporary arts within the Salt Lake City region. With its acclaimed program of challenging artworks, the gallery has become recognized for its groundbreaking direction for presenting both emerging and established artists from both Utah and international areas in a mutual context.

 

For more information, please contact Shadna Sieger at (801) 336-0924 or shadna@iao-gallery.com or Albert Wang at (801) 879-1971 or albert@iao-gallery.com.