| PRESS: or How I Learned To Love The Button Throughout the past 50 years, our world has come to fear the possibility of full-scale nuclear war. The ‘Big Red Button’ has come to symbolize the simplicity of such catastrophic devastation. One simple press by one very human finger could mean the end of our entire existence. Alternatively, Americans have fully embraced the button as immediate access to anything we desire - food, entertainment, money, sex, etc. We are a button pushing people, demanding instant gradification for whatever our minds or bodies crave. With the speed and direction we are currently taking our instant culture, our lives will become filled with useless information, stimulated to the breaking point of the mind. These are the buttons of the future. Each can either give or take, create or destroy, engage or terminate - all depending on the perspective of its operator. Please, choose your button and purpose carefully. (The above is the artist statement of the show.) |
This was my first solo art show, as the flyer says. The original idea behind the show was to create 100 small wooden buttons. Each piece would have different words labeling red buttons on white panels, thus giving non-specific direction or meaning to each button. Some were left intentionally blank as well. According to the statement, each word was chosen randomly to make the buttons more obscure - lending the interpretation of each button pressing to the one doing so.
I was invited to do this installation as the opening show for a (then) new Sacramento gallery, Series 13, by its owner Raju. I agreed before seeing the space, which I have come to learn one shouldn't get in the habit of doing. Upon seeing the gallery and where I was to have the show, I realized 100 wooden buttons wouldn't do much to fill the 17'x14'x10' room. So, with quite a bit of inspiration and obligation, I designed more imagery to be painted directly to the walls.
