Ecstatic Monotony
3 room thesis exhibit
ECSTATIC MONOTONY exhibition at Tulane University March-April 2013.
Dave Greber’s Ecstatic Monotony offers the works of a serious artist seriously experimenting. Amongst its offerings, the show, a culmination of two years’ labor, exhibits sculptures, videos, a four-paneled lenticular tableau, a painting, as well as Greber’s most unique video installation: MyStasseo. “Stasseo” is a linguistic compound of Stained Glass Video. MyStasseo stands 10’ x 15’ and combines latex paint, multiple channels of video projection, as well as rhinestones. By ornamenting his Stasseos with rhinestones, Greber expands the vocabulary of video through a process of ornamentation ordinarily associated with crafts. He combines hands-on artisanship with the impermanence of projection to create sparking dimensionality while connecting themes of consumer disposability. In addition, MyStasseo compounds undefined religious iconography with a faux infomercial. Though the Stasseo takes the shape of a religious mural, the piece offers no spiritual solace. It instead clangs like a pinball machine. Its color pallet (consistent with all the works in Ecstatic Monotony) is Glam Rock. Epic in scale, it takes a patient eye to investigate and consume a terrain that can be considered the postmodern equivalent of an impressionistic landscape.
Greber works in layers and loops. In his single-channel video Stilllives 2: Stilllivin’, cats, bedding, and tableware drop seemingly in perpetuum onto a tabletop. His use of lenticular polyptych in a visual montage that depicts childhood rompings in the quad-panels of The Crick speaks of accumulation, of the rolling snowball effect of time. The combinations of sight, sound, and scale of his Stasseos infuses layers of meaning between multiple sensory impressions.
Just as Greber maintains his color pallet as he crosses mediums, so does he maintain themes of the disposability of religious experience. Greber packages the quest for spiritual enlightenment into oversized Ziplock bags and deities into the sort of soapboxes guerilla marketers hand out to over-stimulated pedestrians at shopping malls and rock concerts. By compounding even-if-undefined religious iconography with merchandizing, one might ask if Greber is attempting to bring the church to Walmart. Has he repackaged mass religion into a bag of sour apple and mango flavored Eucharist wafers one mindlessly munches between the cosmetics and sporting goods aisles? Whether his theme is tongue-in-cheek, social commentary, or bound to Greber’s own attempt to embrace or rebel against institutionalized religion, the works of Ecstatic Monotony maintain notions of some sort of godhead close to its neon heart. Greber’s work merchandizes and makes godhead (or whatever word best identifies the more ethereal part of our day-to-day being) disposable. In doing so, it manages to connect commercial consumerism to artistic experience while maintaining humanity’s bond to the spiritual questions that thousands of years and every expression of human evolution has come no closer to answering.
by Adam Falik
The Artist would like to thank...
Katie Gelfand, Chris and Terry, Mary and Mark, the Minnich’s, Greber’s, Marsteller’s, the Arthur Roger Gallery, C24, Tulane University, the Faculty of the Newcomb Art Department (past and present), My Advisor Mr. Kevin Jones, Aaron Collier, Srdjan Loncar, Michael Plante, Teresa Cole, Nicole Charbonnet, Stephen Hilger, Adam Mysock, AnnieLaurie Erickson, Laura Richens, Sally Main, Elizabeth Guilbeau, Ellen Bull, David Sullivan, David Robinson, my students, my fellow MFA grads (this year and last): Anne Nelson, Sophie Lvoff, Patrick Coll, Jonathan Dean, Flynn O’Brien, Silas Breaux, Sarah House, Greg Price, Josh Knott, Keith Cerone, Grace Mikell, Weston Lambert, Caleb Henderson, Bonnie Maygarden, Dan Alley, Jane Cassidy, Jenna Turner and everyone else at Tulane; Everyone who has helped make my work possible over the past few years (including but not limited to) Matthew Holdren, Roel Miranda, Jacob Edwards, Adam Montegut, Phil Rached, Matt and Jen Aguiluz, Jenny LeBlanc, Valorie Polmer, Peter Leonard, Caitlin Kiely, Brendan Gavin, Brandon Meginley, Stephen Paul Day and Sibylle Peretti, Masa Hachi, Skylar Fein, Carl Joe WIlliams, Chris Alfieri, Chris Bentivegna, Alex Yazigi, Stephen Wussow, Francis Wong, Ricky Weston and Katherine, Aubrey Edwards, Kelci M. Kelci, Brendan Gavin, Mike Celec, Charles Whited, Carl Hugmeyer, Arwen Podesta, Chip, Ashley and Cooper Dupiere, Antenna, Good Children, The Front: Angela Berry, Kyle Bravo, Lee Deigaard, Andrea Ferguson, Kyle Hossli, Rachel Jones, Morgana King, Stephanie Patton , Brooke Pickett, Alex Podesta, Claire Rau, Megan Roniger, Jonathan Traviesa; Dan Cameron, Miranda Lash, Amy Mackie, John Fields, Richard McCabe, Cameron Shaw, Amanda Brinkman,Wesley Stokes, Paul Chan, Blake Bertuccelli, John Otte, Amanda Schneider, Alessandro Sivieri; Joanne McNeil, D. Eric Bookhardt, Adam Falik, Reggie Rodrigue, John d'Addario, Celie Daily, Nick Stillman, Ian Glover, Doug McCash, Chris Herbeck, Amanda LaPlaca; Creative Capital, Vox Populi, UAB, Temple University, John Waters, Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, Mike Kelley, Tim and Eric, Terence McKenna, Frank Zappa, Ween, Southern Candy Makers, Bob Dobbs, all the artists that comprise the St. Claude Art scene, Freret, New Orleans, Philly, Amsterdam, Pensacola, Osaka, Tokyo... and beyond?