Installation view of Vincent Mattina’s In the Shadows of the Giant Mushrooms at the George S. & Dolores Doré Eccles Gallery in Salt Lake City. South City Campus,

When F. Scott Fitzgerald famously remarked that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” he might just have been referring to the everyday cognitive skill of any competent artist. Consider those who must embed themselves deeply enough in their surroundings to fully grasp where they are, yet remain sufficiently apart to be able to depict whatever makes that circumstance unique.

Vincent Mattina, whose one-artist show, In the Shadows of the Giant Mushrooms, is currently at the Salt Lake Community College’s South Campus Eccles Art Gallery, has given much thought to this possibility. As an immigrant who is new to both Utah and its historically dominant culture, he has explored this artistic duality and found a symbolic way to represent it as a universal human experience. After all, as he points out in his conversation and his art, a person who has grown up in this community has lived their entire life like a bee who dwells in the hive, complete with the hive mind that often means knowing what the group thinks before, if not to the exclusion of, what one thinks oneself.

Vincent Mattina’s “The Demise of Pirate Radio” at his home studio.

It should be clear that this is not a criticism. If anything, the artist in him is fascinated by the contrast between his unique and independent view of life, which is an essential element in his artistic identity and works, and the somehow enviable certainty and peace of mind that belonging throughout ones life to a group can provide. That said, the effect of all this on the works that make up In the Shadows of the Giant Mushrooms is really striking. Primarily assemblage works—which is to say sculptures constructed from the everyday materials he salvages from second-hand sources, scrap heaps, antique boutiques, and less creative persons’ trash—they consist almost entirely of new combinations of what are often the most remarkably familiar, even iconic objects.

Perhaps the champion example of this process is a ship model he constructed from an old radio. Unfortunately not in this show, it has two essential elements. One is its heavy wooden case, on which the typical dials and knobs establish its identity. He’s somehow cut or abraded away the bottom of this fancy wooden box at an angle, so that it appears to be sinking into the very table it sits on, just as a ship may rock up and down as it plows through water. To the top he has added masts and sails that invoke the same antique feel as the radio possesses. Together, they make a brilliant transformation that blends two unrelated technologies into a single object that is united by the quality both share: a romantic patina that has overtaken objects that once upon a time were each the latest thing, the state-of-the-art. It’s like a rocket ship powered by a steam engine, but better.

There are some 25 pieces among The Shadows, including one long video of related clips from the history of uranium development and exploitation, a historical event that is pointedly contemporary with the invention and perfection of filmmaking. Mattina complements these objects by placing a now-familiar QR-coded label next to many of them that, when accessed by a digital phone, opens a related animation stored online. The Salt Lake Community College’s exhibitions program, under the supervision of Director James Walton, has proven itself over recent years to be a leader in the deployment of this technology.

Works at Salt Lake Community College include “Ground Zero,” “Whitewash / Brown Wash” and “There is No Death Only a Change of Words.”

Vincent Mattina, “Seconds to Midnight.”

People who live in Utah should be familiar with the extraction industries that came here in search of uranium. They may be—arguably should be—acquainted with the health dangers to the Indigenous peoples who worked in the mines, or lived downwind from the messy processes involved, as well as the lives lived alongside them by settler families affected by the subsequent radiation escaping from weapons development and testing. Mattina intends his art to recognize these various victims, but further to contemplate the economic and cultural motives that drove activities that were controversial with some people, even as they were enthusiastically embraced by others. In “Hot Bed,” a very real Geiger counter, an essential tool in the search for radioactive materials that gave off an eagerly sought and welcome array of sights and sounds when they were found, rests in a small, brass bed such as a child might have played with. It’s one of the more direct statements here.

Installation view of Vincent Mattina’s In the Shadows of the Giant Mushrooms with “Hot Bed” in the foreground.

Vincent Mattina: In the Shadows of the Giant Mushrooms, The George S. & Dolores Doré Eccles Gallery
South City Campus, Center for Arts & Media, through May 22.

All images courtesy of the author.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.