THE HISTORY OF THE DIVISION: exhibition by Matt Shultz

at the University Museum, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale by Adrienne Foster.

The Southern Illinois University Museum of Carbondale held a truly unique exhibition this past March. Unlike the ceaseless run of postmodernist art that has deconstructed contemporary society to death without any opportunity for rebirth, I was quite refreshed to experience an exhibit that can only be referred to as a spiritual journey.  This show, The History of The Division, was an MFA thesis exhibition by SIUC graduate student Matt Schultz.

At the exhibition entrance is a table covered with an array of merchandise and printed material in black and red with The Division insignia that elicits associations with The Red Cross and Christianity. Posed in front of this wall is a cloaked figure that resembles a raven.  It is identified as the Trickster Crow, who is a sly messenger and is associated with reincarnation processes.

Though this exhibition was in fact a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition created by one artist, as was notated on the wall behind the Trickster Crow, no one seemed to notice; everyone seemed to be convinced of the reality of this organization.

Because of his choice of venue, the overall presentation of the exhibit, the diversity of artifacts included, and his meticulous attention to detail, Schultz presents a history of a fake organization that is so believable that the viewer is convinced of its true existence. Schultz then exposes himself as the divine creator of this “reality” to point to the construction of our belief systems in a capitalist and materialist society.

This typical museum exhibit has wax figures of important members within The Division, vitrines with artifacts, plaques that give a brief history of each character, and dioramas that position them in their respective environments, from THE DIVISION PAST to THE DIVISION PRESENT.  There is even an iMac set up to access the organization’s live website, TheDivision.org.

As can be seen in the prominent facial features of the figures and photographic representations of the party members, each character has a striking resemblance to the artist, which can easily be seen as the artist mingled throughout the exhibit, wearing a red dress-shirt and black slacks. It is as if he is a living character in this history. Correlation of member birth and death dates supports this; when one member “dies,” another is born.  This reincarnation process can also be seen in the myth of The Division god, Brx who is left on the earth “to die many times over” and has “hands like ash and pumice” which would require wearing gloves like those worn by all members depicted in the exhibit.

Schultz presents himself as the divine creator of this organization from its creation myth to present. Schultz is Brx, Dr. Baron Klaus von Heidelberg, Rudolph Stiener, The Unknown Soldier, and the Trickster Crow; he is the creator, the magician, the doctor, the priest, the shaman; he is the manipulator of symbols and language to trick the viewer into believing a constructed reality, but only to bring about spiritual healing.

An inattentive viewer is easily convinced of this organization’s reality because the evidence of its construction lies in the tiny details. However, Schultz’s artist statement quite clearly states his intentions in the available brochure: “My work addresses belief systems… Often we put faith in these systems without verifying their authenticity… Only by critically examining our world can we find the truth.”  Only by critical examination of Schultz’s exhibit will the viewer be able to unveil the construction of this organization, this “reality.”

Schultz’s intention is easily seen in his piece Horus Cristo 2¢, a painted case with a shrunken mummy that refers to Horus, an Egyptian god who was born to a virgin mother, was crucified, and rose from the dead three days later, and Jesus Christ, who shares this same history. The “2¢” recalls carnival sideshow acts that capitalize on mystery and viewer gullibility in order to make a few bucks. This piece suggests that these two religions are other forms of constructed belief systems used for monetary profit and calls viewers to question these systems for themselves. As I exit the exhibition, I pass the merchandise table with a better understanding of what I am being sold.  Ideas, like artifacts, are formed by humans, humans who are looking to understand the world they live in. Overtime, humans have lost touch with the world they were trying to understand, and have become completely involved in the world they have constructed. In a society run by materialism, seeing is believing.  Those who have control of what the masses see and consume, whether in science, politics, media, or religion, are the people who have the power and control over anyone who is willing to accept and consume what is being sold to them.

Matt Schultz is putting his foot down, as is an entire emerging generation of independent thinkers and doers who refuse to sit back and let themselves be consumed by a system that is taking over their money, their livelihood, and their beliefs.

The final section of the exhibit presents Schultz’s solution. A sweat lodge used by contemporary Division members in healing rituals refers to  the  reunification of humans with their greater Self.  Several significant artists throughout history have equated this spiritual healing with the transformative experience of art, including Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, and contemporary writer and “magician,” Alan Moore.  These men worked to heal the spirits of their audience through their art, as Schultz does in this exhibit.

Schultz’s The History of The Division is calling his audience to critically examine the society we live in, to see the constructions, to question belief systems, and, in short, to help bring us back to a more profound experience of the existence that we have in this amazing universe.  So question yourself, question your leaders, question your world—not out of rebellion or disrespect, but to find our flaws as humans and contribute to the effort to improve our world instead of allowing ourselves to be consumed by an increasingly broken one

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Adrienne Foster, Master of Fine Arts Candidate  at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, is currently studying visual culture and digital media.

Ron English; Activist Artist

by David Freeman

Ron English is a revolutionary who exhibits graphics-based protest artworks that illustrate to the populace how our conventional thinking is upside down. He portrays our popular culture in a stark passionate and real manner, attacking corporate America’s propaganda and its profound misleadings, the government’s atrocities, religious hypocrisy, and our mass media censors and their iron fist   of repression on freedom of speech, with brilliant truthful realism.

Over the years English has systemically developed an inspiring and subversive manifesto, a personal artistic style of “liberating” billboards that depict anthropomorphized caricatures ridiculing corporate America’s food, liquor, cigarette, oil and military conglomerates.

English audaciously lampoons and incites a rebellion of defiance toward our conditioned acceptance of failed and polarized government bureaucracy, immoral corporate privileged entitlement, our nation’s indifference toward false reasons of war, and of our government’s rewarding the failures of banks, mortgage companies and the auto industry.

He and his crew clandestinely and illegally place their political/social artwork on top of  paid advertiser’s billboards. In his “Smooth Character Billboard” he depicts a cute little baby camel being seduced by an adult directly offering her a Camel filtered cigarette. In another he takes a wide backhand to Bush by depicting him as an ape with the text reading, “Evolution it’s not for everyone.” In the billboard titled “We Deceive You Believe,” English has the Fox T.V. News logo as the prominent part of the billboard ad, making a social comment on the fact that Fox T.V. News has no credibility. For all his covert activism aimed at giving the billboards and the power of the manipulation of truth in  advertising back to the people, he has been jailed over 30 times. English truly appreciates the moment when his audience questions whether or not the billboards are real or a hoax. The dialogue these works produce are sometimes more puzzling than what we question of Fox news itself.

English presently is enjoying status as one of America’s premier celebrity-outlaw-street guerilla-activist-artists. He has stated, “Corporate America has all the freedom of speech but…the common man doesn’t have these same freedoms. Our mass media has standards that govern what they allow to be published and they dictate what gets printed and the content of what gets sited in advertising today.” Accordingly, he liberates billboards to afford them their voice. So it’s no surprise that today we find our most subversive and innovative graphic art works of protest on city walls, subway transit platforms, doorways, lampposts, dumpsters, and construction ramparts and walkways. These architectural and street bulwarks offer the public some of the most visible social and political protest graphics by guerilla artists, and English is at the forefront of getting “art back to the people.” ‘Getting art back to the people’ is one of the main themes he is positioning as a theme for a film in the works.

Recently, Ron English visited South Texas for reconnaissance regarding an upcoming exhibit he is planning at South Texas College and the International Museum of Art & Science. Along with his film crew, he shot a plethora of South Texas identifiers such as the border wall, ropas stores, dollar stores, the streets of Mexico at night, and spent two days visiting ranches and farms spray-painting graphics on an assortment of bovines.

Fox Nexs

English is a master at multi-tasking and seemed to be constantly shifting between artistic concerns, always assessing philosophy and materials for future and present projects. While in Texas, he spray painted camouflage on a bull,  midget Mexican roping steers, and a show cow. He shot several short film clips using a surreal, almost Dadaist film style, depicting a Porsche Cayman S running over a stuffed toy bunny gorged with balloons of ketchup, Worchester sauce and tripas. This film short was jarring; it juxtaposed a cute fluffy stuffed bunny against a very real tragic and horrific road kill. The still photos produced from this series possess a visual dichotomy that cause the viewer to take a second look for the purpose deducing exactly what is going on within the scene. The false against the real is very striking in its visual severity and runs a philosophical mirror with English’s subgenres. With this scene English achieves an explosion of style; an avant-garde conceptual performance, a punk theatre, experimental photography, and a film just short of a classical quasi-improvisatory scale.

All of his endeavors are popular commercial successes but are also fine art critical successes also. English’s genius comes from his mixing and remixing iconographic images from popular culture and repositioning them for the express purpose of portraying all their deceit, avarice and greed. The achievement of this activist success requires a certain amount of stealth, grit, impulsive idealism, and a belief in forced vigilance for the betterment of mankind. His art works are high impact, progressive, confrontational, but they are also creative, beautiful, sassy visuals that confront for an improved future.

There is great call for artists to be social activists, political fighters, community minded advocates and fight corporate injustices, government wrongs, and the lies that the media spout, and to do it covertly in the streets. Galleries, artist-run spaces, non-profits and museums are on the rise in exhibiting these concerns; many are popping up with this as a main mission and there is a wealth of galleries that cater to this variety of art today.

Ron English

Anyone who has had the honor of enjoying English’s’ company, will have immediately noticed his quiet wit, intelligence, knowledge of art history, and his succinct cleverness at expressing his feeling about all the above in his art.

“I painted over a thousand billboards over the last 30 years, enough squarefootage to fill every art museum in the US. That’s a lot of art I could havesold, but for me art isn’t a vehicle of personal greed, it is an important intervention in the global dialogue. With the use of billboards established a more direct communication and reached more people than I ever would have from any interior walls.”

I was dumbfounded when he told me he was a first generation college graduate and was almost tossed out of graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin back in the early 80’s. It was only by the petitioning of Peter Saul to his graduate committee that he was allowed to continue his studies. His professors were disgruntled with his work; he was doing commissioned murals and works that were labeled too commercial, his graduate committee deemed them ‘not fine art’. He saw graduate school as a type of an education that would enable him the comprehension of learning the craft or the layman’s skill of painting realistically, but he never did gain this schooling while attending University. This education came when he moved to New York and apprenticed with Larry Rivers, Marsha Gillian King, Catrone and Casabi. He wondered how his professors could so abuse the sensitive minds and talents of all the other graduate students like him, he stated, “the art world was a lot easier to deal with than graduate school ever was.” He also noted that he is the only one of his graduating class that is making a living as an artist today.  English states, “First generation students don’t have the facilities to refer to, such as a parent, to ask for direction with questions of what to do when they hit a road block in our system of higher education.” He has a great empathy for the challenges they face. This is part of the reason he agreed to exhibit and lecture at South Texas College and was happy to share his experience with the students and faculty, in hopes of inspiring them to see the worth in being true to their identity and character. These are the specifics that make up ones disposition and it’s especially important to hold onto these traits in the mist of all the trials and tribulations they face in attaining a college education.

English has an eye for observing  common dilemmas and the uncanny (much like a utopian socialist philosopher on acid), and possesses the creative mastery to present them back to us as a cultural and spiritual intervention – via art.

By David Freeman

Art Professor at South Texas College

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Glassell School of Art, Houston by Nancy Moyer, PhD

Blooms

Jewelry has long been prized for its function of physical adornment; it has proclaimed the proud status of its wearer; it has served to supplement and enhanced the beauty of the wearer. In this unusual exhibit, Extreme Beauty, at the Glassell School of Art, the tradition seems to have gone somewhat astray.

Kim Cridler, curator for the exhibit, states as the purpose of this exhibition to “feature contemporary makers who pursue extreme beauty and adornment through metalsmithing, jewelry, and site specific body works. Works included in this exhibition gauge in a range from the devotional act of replication to works that assume a historical or critical assessment of the problematic nature of beauty.”

The phrase, “problematic nature of beauty” is significant here. Several of the artists have opposed the socially acceptable definitions of physical enhancement and offer other ways to define body adornment.

Extreme Beauty

Extreme Beauty 2

Extreme Beauty 3

Burcu Buyukunal, a Turkish jeweler, offers photographs of facial adornment pieces. Terrifying Beauty series #1 through #4 shows the model adorned. Rather than enhancement, these pieces are designed to disrupt the natural face of the wearer. Rather than behaving passively, as does traditional jewelry, these adornments actually alter the wearer’s visage. Strategically formed wire(s), each piece addresses a section of the face and fits around the head. In Terrifying Beauty #1, the shape of the mouth is altered by pressing the lips and giving them a slight twist; Terrifying Beauty #2 exaggerates a cheekbone, making it a very prominent facial feature.

Lauren Kalman reacts to the traditional desire to amend the imperfections and impermanence of the physical human form. Her digital print, Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments (Nevus Comedonicus), documents the replication of skin disease using acupuncture needles, pearls, and gold.   She presents gold jewelry as a vehicle to amplify taboo aspects of the body, such as skin defects and disease. Lauren states. “The form of the adornment often reflects malignant excrescences, such as rupturing membranes or cancerous growths. These gleaming outgrowths cause bodily residues to be shed as they spread orifices and tear skin.”

Transformed Adornment Nightstand

Lauren attempts to bring dignity to these often-shameful phenomena.

She believes that the beauty of gold when perceptively alloyed with the seeping body allow the objects to become both intriguing and repulsive. Gold adornment highlights the surfaces where the interior body transgresses its boundaries and makes imperfections and diseases visible. This gives the passerby permission to stare at a body that is normally not acceptable.

Orange Baroque, a silver, agate, and mineral neckpiece by Leslie Shershow, denies its preciousness by assuming the appearance of cardboard. This piece has denied its stylistically historical place among precious jewelry for the elite European Baroque era nobility by its surface coating.  Looking every bit a rainy day project with a corrugated box, although meticulous in its execution, it belies its precious value by its cheap mass consumerism appearance.

Your Opinion

Kristen Beeler has riffed off the form of a traditional spoon, turning it into an object speaking of longing and lost values. Your Opinion, fine silver, cotton thread, mother of pearl, and ink, denies its traditional function as an indifferent tool for transporting food and through the image of a bird, a suggested branch, and red thread, becomes a bearer of remorse.

A larger piece in this exhibit, Transformed Adornment Nightstand, by Curtis H. Arima protests  its manufacture. A large plant form exuberantly grows from the edge of the nightstand’s joining of planes. Its vine begins to control one leg. Transformed speaks of the unnatural state of manufactures objects. Their only hope is to return to nature. The very stance of the piece is defiant. It will return to its natural state.

“Extreme Beauty” lives up to its stated purpose. The works in this show rebel against their very definition, leading us toward new perceptions and rationales of physical enhancement and the man-made object.

Nancy Moyer is Professor Emerita of Art from UTPA.

For a full gallery of images from this event, click on the gallery in the sidebar!

also, go check out the various galleries and info on our main site!

and from behind the projector…

It is even better full screen!

also, for more pics and events around the state during Contemporary Art Month, check back here often, and visit our main site!

Fantastic display of work by Dirk Lange! Blue Star Arts Complex, Gallery 4.

You must see the work in person to appreciate the detail…