Art as a Targeted Missile
By L.P. Streitfeld
The potentials for, realities of and secrets about military corporate alliances infect our lives. But how can we possibly get a grasp on something too huge, too insidious to contemplate? A work of art designed to look like a targeted missile, a work recently on display at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art confronts the viewer with this question. Its creator is David Opdyke, the recipient of the Aldrich Emerging Artist Award for 2004. His untitled exhibition is timely and unsettling..
The stark beauty of Opdyke’s meticulous visual language lays bare the vicious interlocking relationship between the American consumer and the military corporate alliance and, as a result of this relationship, the shadow that mighty America casts on the world. Opdyke upturns his former livelihood as architectural model-maker to make a brilliant statement–he has much to say about this culture fueled by its insatiable appetites.
The urethane foam model of the Pentagon opposite the entrance of the exhibit space immediately draws the visitor into the caustic vision of this Williamsburg artist. With Defense Development, Opdyke utilizes the symbol of the pentacle to sum up the unholy alliance between American insecurities and the relentless expansion of the military. We see that the Department of Defense building consists of a development of identical suburban houses intricately locked into the self-contained pattern of the pentagon. This devastating work strikes at the root of homogenous America, a society trapped by its own consumerist shadow.
On the wall beside the gallery entrance is Unity, a plywood geographical puzzle reinterpreting world geography in relation to American ethnocentrism. In the center of the gallery is Oil Empire, a three-dimensional map with a skeletal system of interconnected pipes that depicts America consumed by its appetite for oil. All in the Same Boat is a model of a giant cruise ship rendered in rusted plumbing, its interior outfitted with 900 white toilets intricately connected by interlocking pipes revealing an absurd intricate system of sewage containment.
If America could just stop actively consuming, Opdyke is saying, perhaps we could be liberated by the confrontation with our shadow. This is precisely what his satiric art provides us–new interpretations of consciously imbedded symbols and systems that create a dark reflecting mirror on American consumerism. Pre-emptive Product Placement (2003) is a metal model of a missile with surfaces divvied up by corporate logos–a wry comment indeed on the logical conclusion of the unholy alliance between American consumerism and global militarism.
Opdyke depicts the anal, obsessive quality of American consumerism as the dark force driving globalization. The futility of dialogue trapped within this dying paradigm is played out in Debatable (2004), a video depicting a circular dialogue against a political landscape where both sides mirror each other’s limited perceptions.
Opdyke’s seamless unity between microcosm and macrocosm is as flawless as his execution. There is an Ionesco quality to this work, which appears quite utilitarian at first, revealing the absurdities to those who venture for a closer look. Meticulously rendered drawings demonstrate the ingenious application of an artistic language to trace global patterns of the American shadow. Morning Rush (2004) is an aerial view of a suburban traffic jam consisting of military tanks. Connected is a world map intricately marked with flight patterns of what appear to be birds but what. upon inspection, turn out to be military planes. Just Do It applies this iconography to the Nike symbol. Because of Opdyke’s penetrating insight into global systems, the layers of meaning run deep. He confronts us with his penetrating view of the natural rhythms of the earth thwarted by massive quantities of negative consumption.
The Aldrich’s 2002 Emerging Artist choice of Yuken Teruya, who used military iconography as designs for Japanese kimonos, highlighted the continuing tradition of investigating the relationship between consumerism and militarism established by Shomei Tomatsu, a leader of the Japanese avant-garde whose powerful retrospective was recently at the Japan Society Gallery. The importance of the 2004 Emerging Artist Award Exhibition goes beyond the highly deserved recognition for Opdyke. With this unbeatable choice picking up on Philbrick’s 2002 discovery, the Aldrich sets a new standard for an American aesthetic to contain the tremendous shadow cast by America’s security needs.
So now, when we are beset with suspicion about how our freedom is being compromised by the military corporate alliances, instead of taking a corporate manufactured sedative, we can point to Opdyke’s art and permit ourselves to get agitated. That is one way out of the Pentagon maze.
"David Opdyke: 2004 Aldrich Emerging Artist Award" was on view through January 2005, along with Shahzia Sikander: Nemesis; Bottle: Contemporary Art and Vernacular Tradition; Aldrich at the Movies; Michael Rees: Large and Moving; and Jonathan Seliger: Politeness Counts. The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.
Image gallery
All in the Same Boat, 2004. Painted wood, plastic, and metal 66 x 12 x 18 Collection of Ninah and Michael Lynne
