BFA Grad Show, 'Sunrise of Regret' color MoFA
Story by Addison Kane, courtesy of http://www.fsunews.com. Photos by Whitney Borkowski.
This past Friday, thirteen BFA students were finally able to breath as they showcased their work in the tri-annual BFA/MFA Grad Show. Coinciding with the exhibition was Chuck Carbia’s installation class’ surreal performance entitled Sunrise of Regret.
The BFA Grad Show, exhibiting the senior theses of upcoming graduates Tabet, Chaya Avramov, Morgan Hamilton, Jacob Waites, Layne Roytman, Dustin Clark, Michelle LaFrance and Elisabeth Adelman, and Sunrise, a multimedia installation/ performance, overlap in more than a few ways. Hardly incidental, these similarities stem from shared participants, such as Tabet (contributing ‘glittery plaster vomit’ downstairs, and upstairs, “Xiquilla,” a pretzel-shaped man with gaping, flower stuffed womb & wax baby attached by silicon umbilical cord), fellow BFA Hamilton, and others.
Morgan Hamilton, WEDAPPL
The hilarious pseudo-legalese and social consciousness in Hamilton’s work can easily be traced through each exhibit. Upstairs, he showcases tasteful, finely spun costumes and an amendable new United States constitution, under the title WEDAPPL, along with an explanation lamenting the deification of the founding fathers.
In an unsurprising rebuke of prohibition and austerity measures, one of the guest-proposed amendments, LXXV, reads, “GIN Buckets every game.” It is unclear if the lowercase second half suggests a loss of enthusiasm, or whether or not the capitalization of gin is merely a way of emphasizing the participant’s drink of choice.
Sunrise of Regret, the collaborative effort between students of FSU professor/ Glitter Chariot co-mastermind Chuck Carbia’s installation class, is equal parts Fear and Loathing, Tim and Eric, and Requiem for a Dream, with an implied touch of bestiality.
Carbia’s students perform under demonic red lighting, in and around the orange plush rugs and hallucinatory infomercials, while viewers cycle in and out for the two-hour event, toggling between the upper and lower floors.In one of two videos playing on loop in the converted sculpture lab/ Vegas hotel room, the first is an commercial titled “Mort Saperstein’s Annulment Emporium,” featured on a small flat-screen behind the installation, is a companion piece by fellow installation artist Clark Hawkes. Made up of found Youtube footage, stripped of its audio and replaced with surround sound overdubs of “people having intercourse, people fighting, and drunk guys laughing,” the video adds to the performance’s morning after feel.
“The sounds vary in distance, so as everyone is trying to focus on these images, the sounds are kind of scattered across the background, creating the mood,” Hawkes said.
Images of Honey Boo-Boo, Hank Williams Jr.’s infamously sloppy Fox News interview, and the salivary gloss on an ant-eating girl’s close-up, all make an appearance, while performers banter around a storyline involving an impatient, regretful mother, laying with an abstracted “baby.”
Sipping from a Challace full of “blood,” Morgan Bryson recommends a taste to her demented hotel midwives.
“If you want to try it, it’s very good, it’s type O” Bryson said, to snickering from the audience.
An alarm clock flashes in the background, as though the power had gone out and no one cared to change it. As Bryson yells at her child’s father, who happens to be a wolf, for a towel, the night comes full circle.
“I only need towels!” Bryson said. “If you’re gonna use that, just hold your son or something. I’m gonna go get cheese,” Bryson said, followed by the exit and replacement of a pair of performers.
Navigating back and forth between the absurdist hell-pit and formal gala upstairs, the guests at Friday’s MoFA showing get to have it both ways as well, reveling in the demented past-times of these characters, while also witnessing a grand celebration of the graduates’ inspired virtuosity upstairs; a fitting duality for such dynamic company.
For a full gallery of images from this night’s exhibition please visit the BFA Grad Show Fall 2013 Gallery
Written by Addison Kane. To view the original story, please visit: http://www.fsunews.com