HOUSTON, TX.- Blaffer Art Museum is presenting In Real Life by San Antonio-based artist Kelly O’Connor as the next installment of its Window into Houston series. This site-specific project continues through January 27 at Blaffer’s satellite downtown Houston location, 110 Milam Street.
In Real Life is composed of two elements, a printed banner—an enlarged collage depicting a scene constructed of images appropriated from publicity materials for old movies, 1960s fashion magazines, a postcard from Yellowstone National park, and Disneyland advertisements—and an installation addressing drug culture, from its tools of consumption such as burned spoons to its mind-altering effects.
By appropriating these types of mass-media images, tools, and memorabilia In Real Life focuses on the agents and technologies of what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze called “societies of control.” For Deleuze, societies of control are characterized by the constant institutional regulation of individual and social life. In societies of control, there is no distinction between working and consuming; mechanisms of command penetrate everywhere, becoming fully internalized; and there are no open times and spaces outside of an ever expanding sphere of network communication, production, and circulation of information.
For O’Connor, societies of control operate mainly through drugs and media. In her practice, she delves on the aesthetics of psychedelia, from its trippy colors and shapes to its behavioral patterns such as hypnotized states or forms of self-withdrawal. On the other hand, her work includes elements of Disney industry, from cartoon characters to its physical manifestations in Disneyland as well as national parks, resorts, and other archetypical American vacation destinations–this year marks the 60th anniversary of the 1955 opening of Disneyland, which O’Connor views as a paradigmatic space of total simulation.
For almost a decade, O’Connor has appropriated images from paper media produced during the 1950s and 1960s as part of an ongoing inquiry into the technologies and spaces of control and simulation. By titling her project In Real Life, a common phrase used in online communities to refer to the life outside the Internet, Kelly O’Connor juxtaposes her vintage archival imagery with current media slang, tracing the source of contemporary control societies to late mid-20th century recreational technologies.
In Real Life continues the main artistic strategies O’Connor has employed throughout her career, the defamiliarizing potential of collage and montage—practices that involve the combination, overlap, and In Real Life continues the main artistic strategies O’Connor has employed throughout her career, the defamiliarizing potential of collage and montage—practices that involve the combination, overlap, and
