{"id":38975,"date":"2007-10-05T19:48:13","date_gmt":"2007-10-06T01:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38975"},"modified":"2023-11-23T09:58:07","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T15:58:07","slug":"stevens-cliche-is-cliche-video-works-by-grant-stevens-at-the-byu-moa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/stevens-cliche-is-cliche-video-works-by-grant-stevens-at-the-byu-moa\/","title":{"rendered":"Stevens\u2019 Clich\u00e9 Is Clich\u00e9: Video Works by Grant Stevens at the BYU MoA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>When art addresses topics on a conceptual level, the concept becomes the subject of that art. In\u00a0BYU Museum of Art\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0exhibition\u00a0Clich\u00e9 and Collusion: Video Works by Grant Stevens<\/i>, the subject is mass media and the many questions associated with mass media. This is a widely discussed topic today, a very relevant one with relevant issues such as: how are we as a society affected by the media? how is the contemporary mentality of our society a product of the media and how are we manipulated by what we see on TV, the news, newspapers, magazines, the internet, radio, advertisements, etc\u2026? Mass media even makes us question what is fact and what is fiction. What we come to believe as truth might be a product of the overpowering influence in society which uses the media for profit. How do these ideas affect the thinking of society? The implications in this exhibition need no in-depth analysis here. They are familiar and widely discussed topics.Stevens uses a series of video works with titles such as \u201cThink Right Now\u201d (2005), \u201cLearning Your ADD\u2019s\u201d (2002), \u201cWhen There\u2019s Love\u201d (2005). Topics addressed, using various \u201cdemonstrations,\u201d are those such as one would find in a 101 lesson on semiotics \u2014 the relationships between viewer and viewed, between the signifier and signified. How do the various tools of the media which we see every day affect how we think? \u201cThink Right Now\u201d demonstrates how much we don\u2019t think when bombarded with signs and slogans. A blank screen flashes texts: \u201cOwn a Hollywood Smile!\u201d \u201c30% Off!\u201d \u201cIn Debt?\u201d \u201cFeeling Lonely?\u201d \u201cStop Worrying,\u201d \u201cPower, Performance, Value!\u201d \u201cFree!\u201d and \u201cNew and Improved!\u201d The viewer is assuredly familiar with these phrases. \u201cLearning Your ADD\u2019s\u201d \u2014 again, on a blank screen \u2014 flashes a montage of anachronisms such as CSI, NBA, SUV, FBI, CNN, NBC, etc, revealing just how ADD we as a society truly are as the effect of flashing montage is not only banal but bears the quality of channel surfing. And \u201cWhen There\u2019s Love\u201d finds the participant in a large dark room, with lighted phrases of incredibly dull endearment, such as found in popular love songs, with which we are uncannily too familiar. And this uncanniness is complete with the Righteous Brother\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019ve Lost That Lovin\u2019 Feeling\u201d and the lights of a disco ball equally as banal. These installations focus on questions and topics that are continually addressed as we struggle with the media-frenzied, propaganda-motivated, ideologically-driven machine we find ourselves living in.So where are the answers to be found? How is the riddle of mass media to be solved? In Stevens\u2019 exhibit, we are taught to think outside the box, but it is this box that is telling us this! We are told by Stevens to address media manipulation, but how is he doing this? He is using media to question media. He uses his \u201cown\u201d agenda and propaganda to question the agenda and propaganda that runs this machine, which we are all supposedly slaves to. Art itself, apparently, is not innocent in playing a part in the mass-media machine!<\/p>\n
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In an article I wrote for\u00a0last month\u2019s issue, I spoke of something I called \u201ctranscendental art,\u201d which I observed at the Woodbury Art Gallery\u2019s Invitational exhibition. That exhibit gave me great hope for the state of contemporary art. So that the reader does not have to delve into last month\u2019s article, in short I discussed what I saw as a contemporary phenomenon of \u201ctranscendental art.\u201d Art has the power, as I saw at the Woodbury, to have an \u201copen narrative,\u201d to be seen by the many but be seen by the one. In the review of the Woodbury I wrote how I had seen art which had qualities to be looked at by a mass audience, but for a plurality of meaning to be derived from a single art object which allowed for one individual, as I candidly saw at the exhibition, to react differently to others at this exhibition. The final cycle at the Woodbury illustrated this very well: how most, viewing that particular room in the gallery, Layers I, II, and III, could find something individual for them, a feeling, a thought, a memory, a moment, an emotion.When writing that article I wondered if this idea of contemporary art that I had seen at the Woodbury was universal today or specific to the art I saw at the Woodbury show. I see now that it is not universal today, as Steven\u2019s was not, but still is highly prevalent in today\u2019s art world. I see after the new exhibit at the BYU MoA how powerful this idea is. Stevens\u2019 work was not bad art, but one might compare it to something by Bill Viola. In viewing a Viola, one swims in one\u2019s own thoughts. Two individuals watch the same video and have entirely different experiences, a plurality of meaning. For much of the 20th\u00a0century art has been didactic, a \u201cmodernist directive.\u201d Art need no longer be didactic. The comment was said about the Stevens\u2019 work, \u201cIt was so engaging!\u201d But isn\u2019t all art supposed to engage, to incite. But art does not have to be didactic. To be didactic keeps art inside the box. It keeps the machine alive. Art can be political or have a particular purpose, but art today also has the power to be free of the mechanisms of society, and in its transcendence, not patronize but allow for a flow of meaning.<\/p>\n

To avoid sounding vague, I will use the work of Viola as an example. His recent piece at the University of Utah Museum of Fine Arts introduced to the viewer a continual narrative cycle, one which the viewer could enter the installation room at any given moment and have an equally powerful experience. Viola\u2019s piece defies description, but it was of five figures, apparently reacting to a certain event, each conveying certain emotions. Unlike many video artists who question the role of subjectivity and end up with objectivity in their preaching, Viola introduces the viewer to something sublime, something which is completely open, infinite, and intangible, yet allows for this plurality, this free flow of meaning. In this it is not we who are the subject but we who create the subject, it is we who give the piece its meaning. The piece allows the viewer to reflect, ponder, feel, remember, journey, wonder, think. It does not do those things for us.<\/p>\n

It is a refreshing product of art today \u2014 that it is freed from the textbook \u2014 and we need no set of instructions, no guide book. Today\u2019s artists might be the exception to the media machine and allow the viewer to be engaged but not manipulated. Artists such as Viola, and that which could be seen last month at the Woodbury, allow for an experience where the work is not in a diatribe found in the artist\u2019s mission statement but in the asking questions and not answering them, opening dialogues and discussions and truly engaging the viewer; in allowing the viewer to be freed into their own subjectivity \u2014 not preached to, patronized, manipulated. The work allows us to think outside the box rather than being given a directive to do so.<\/p>\n

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When art addresses topics on a conceptual level, the concept becomes the subject of that art. In\u00a0BYU Museum of Art\u2019s\u00a0exhibition\u00a0Clich\u00e9 and Collusion: Video Works by Grant Stevens, the subject is mass media and the many questions associated with mass media. This is a widely discussed topic today, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":38976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[781,3260],"class_list":["post-38975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-byu-museum-of-art","tag-grant-stevens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/grantstevens0.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 22:31:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72244,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38975\/revisions\/72244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}