"Borderlandia" at the Tucson Museum of Art

The "Borderlandia" exhibit, currently showing at the Tucson Museum of Art, is an awesome exhibit. The effect on the senses that that of an onslaught; a cultural overload. If kitsch-culture was a religion, then this show would be its temple. Like the churches of Europe, the art tells stories...multiple stories of cultural collision; of blood, pain, suffering, and the quest for gold, or at least all that glitters. And in this show, all that glitters may not be gold, and it actually more likely to be glass.

The artwork is a cross-cultural mish-mash. It is so cluttered, and riddled with glitz, color, texture, and advertising images, that the effect on the senses is overwhelming.  It's quite possible to get a headache at this show, the amount of visual material here is nauseating. It looks like what I normally associate with "post modern art" (that is, art that is made of found objects, appropriated images, and with an odd ahistorical quality)...but a large part of it is made of cast or blown glass.

Images from art history, from Spanish Colonial history, Mexican pop culture, Southern California hot rod culture, and American pop-culture are all thrown together into a cultural blender, and then organized around familiar shapes (e.g. the Aztec calendar wheel) and colors.

The imagery is crude, crass, glitzy, and very well done. The materials alone are outrageous: 3D hologram images with attached cartoon eye stickers, in fur-lined frames. It's got a delicious quality to it.  Does anyone here remember the ice-cream restaurant in the El Con Mall called "Farrell's"? Farrell's had an item on their menu called "The Boat", which was a large silver trough with about forty scoops of ice cream in it. Trying to look at everything in this exhibit, and to try to process it, is like attempting to eat "The Boat"; it's that visually rich.

A few of the pieces that stood out for me: "Killing the Inner Child": a glass Lucha Libre wrestler sculpture, with real inset glass eyes, holding a cheap plastic mirror; "E.R. For the Soul", which combines Leonardo's "Last Supper" (at the top of the picture) with a bowling alley at the  bottom, with attached glass "punk" figurines at the bottom of the picture, give a 3D effect to the viewer (with objects which are closer to you in the picture actually protruding out from the picture plane, and those that are further back in space remaining flat)

There is another "Last Supper" reference in the show, and that is a piece called "Cambia de Canal"/"Change of Channel"), which uses a five foot high silver colored menorah as the main foundation of the piece, atop with sits an old 15" black and white TV, covered in aluminum foil, and which is ON, and set to a station that has "snow"; a circular opening for the screen has an Aztec Calendar when drawn upon in Sharpie. Atop the TV, sits a glass cast of the Last Supper, but instead of faces, there are numbers, which references those old "who's who" key charts in those old cigarette ads from the '60's. At the base of the menorah are about 20 beer, wine, and booze bottles spray painted silver. What does it mean? Well...it looks like an electronic cross-cultural mishmash sculpture, made of art and artifacts both old and new, sacred and profane...and with a touch of glass. That description could be used to briefly summarize most all of the work in this exhibit.

I circled though "Borderlandia" three times. First, I made a quick pass through, then a second time spending longer periods of time around pieces that I especially liked, and finally, hanging out by the massive cathedral-like facade on the second level, where the effect of art nausea on me was particularly intense.

One observation that I had was that a lot of this work, especially the round flat work, reminded me of platters of food from Costco.  How apt!

All of this visual richness, its "yummy" quality, but also it's gross headache inducing quality, makes "Borderlandia" an amazing show. This is an exhibit that really can rival Disneyland in the way of visual thrills, but also the nausea that often accompanies too much cotton candy, and too many rides on the roller coasters. It's about time!