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PAST EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS

 

February 18th, 2010 - "God Bless" - Robert Mermet's Solo Exhibition Opening Reception

Exhibition Duration: February 18 - March 12, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 18, 7pm
LIVE Music By: Bern and the Brights, The Orange Drop
Suggested Admission: $5 at the door
Curator: Michiko Mull

Alfa Art Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of "God Bless", the solo exhibition of new work by Robert Mermet on view from February 18th - March 12th, 2010. Employing a range of brand names, cultural symbols, and political figures, Mermet reveals the false illusions of American icons through the appropriation, deconstruction, and reconstruction of their contexts. Often juxtaposing satirical text alongside these familiar images, Mermet pokes fun of branding and politics while implementing a minimalistic, design-based approach to painting. In his newest series, Mermet paints upon four foot wide canvases to reinterpret the ubiquitous paper fortune held inside Chinese cookies, authoritatively proclaiming statements such as "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and "Jesus is Magic". While much of the artist's work is unconservative and provocative, Mermet hopes that his viewers will have have a sense of humor when interpreting his paintings. Alfa Art Gallery sat down with the artist for a closer translation of Mermet's newest body of work:

AA: When and why did you realize that you wanted to be an artist?

RM: I’ve wanted to be an artist for as long as I can remember. My kindergarten teacher told my parents that I had artistic potential and every art teacher I’ve had since then has been very good about nurturing [my talent]. In high school I was able to take four years of video production as well as four years of art, these classes sometimes went back to back and I never saw anything dividing these mediums. The decision to study film/video at an art school seemed like the right path for me and after visiting my cousins at Rutgers during my senor year of high school, I knew that New Brunswick seemed like the place to be.

AA: What or who are your biggest influences?

RM: If I could pick one it would be Andy Warhol. I think most contemporary artists make work that talks to Warhol in one way or another. I am also a big fan of Johns; many of the works in this show reference works by Johns, I love his aesthetic. I love artists who aren’t afraid of using humor in their work - Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Richard Prince, etc. But I’ll admit that the artists I’m most interested in are those who are trying to become the Warhol of the 21st century – Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and even Jeff Koons.

AA: Your work seems to be politically contentious and you've mentioned that some of your paintings "received a lot of flack" for their abrasive content. Do you consider yourself to be a political artist? Do you often anticipate an oppositional response to your work?

RM: I think all art can be viewed as political but I don’t consider myself to be a political artist. I read a lot of politically based publications but it is not one of my primary interests. I’d rather read artfourm than the huffingtonpost but I try to keep tabs on everything...But yeah I never want something to say one message or another. I want it to be able to go both ways.

AA: I know this may be a pretty tough question but how do you see your work evolving in the next few years?

RM: I have no idea...I don't even want to know. I don't like the idea of blueprints...I think if you have too much of an idea of what you want to do then it can take a lot of flexibility out of process, coming up with new and better ideas. One of the quotes I always go back to in my life is a Stanley Kubrick quote, "Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble." ...It's better to sit there and think about it because there's always a better move to be made. So in that sense, you don't want anything to be concrete. You want to be flexible and that makes it more interesting I think.


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