Kate's Exhibit Review

Visit to Seldon’s Hunter College Studio: Though I am not planning on furthering my education in art after graduating from TCNJ, the visit to Seldon’s studio was still very informative. For one thing, Seldon did not move straight from his BA to his MFA, but rather waited several years. That made me realize that I might change my mind eventually, and so I paid attention to all of his insights. Though his description of grad school was a little bleak, I appreciated his honesty. He made it clear that for some, it is essential, while others consider it a waste of time. The biggest surprise was that in his own work he was clearly continuing to explore, rather than honing in on one focus.

PS1: Robert Boyd’s piece, Conspiracy Theory, a video collage set to pumping disco music, was at once disturbing and seductive. As passersby browsed through the adjacent galleries, the words, “I believe in you,” pumped faintly to a catchy beat, and drew them to the darkened room. They fumbled into the room and sank to the floor, mesmerized by the glowing video and overwhelmingly upbeat music. Boyd spliced snippets of video from every source imaginable, regardless of quality. The clips were sorted into two separate channels simultaneously shown on two walls that intersected in a corner. He included scenes from sci-fi B movies depicting aliens and reptilian beings peeling off their human masks, grainy shots of impassioned lecturers providing evidence for their conspiracy theories, interviews with matter-of-fact people describing how aliens had abducted them, and documentation of rallies, with crowds brandishing signs declaring that 9/11 was an inside job, or that AIDS is a government conspiracy. Yet Boyd’s work is not a mere collection of clips; it is more than the sum of the results of a YouTube search of the phrase conspiracy theories. The juxtaposition of these images with the disco music conjures up a teeming dance floor, a seemingly innocuous version of a mob.
I found myself becoming transfixed by the various theories. I have always been able to suspend my disbelief long enough to entertain them, and in turn, they would entertain me. But as I watched Robert Boyd’s piece, I was struck with the absolute conviction that these people possessed. Though I was not swept away by them, for a moment, they succeeded in planting a shadow of a doubt in my mind.
Because Robert Boyd gave an artist talk at TCNJ that included a screening of his other video series, Xanadu, I came to Conspiracy Theories already knowing his motivation. Though Xanadu was pretty much the same format (hodgepodge of video clips set to disco), its theme was apocalyptic imagery. I found the subject of conspiracy theories a better fit to the music choice, actually, and if I did not know which piece came first, I might be tempted to think that Xanadu was the second piece, the result of a formula Boyd had premiered in Conspiracy Theories and only resorted to in Xanadu for the sake of uniformity.