John Morris' Missing Cookies




Read the review below.

If you missed artist John Morris' presentation last evening, as part of the Dislocating The Image
lecture series at Harford Community College, in Bel Air, Maryland– then you missed a chance to eat the art, per se.
Morris unraveled a fascinating lecture that placed his work in reference to the history of art that has influenced him.
Morris talked about the portrait work of Diane Arbus and investigated the nature of space and fringe of the portrait.
Morris cited the miniature, staged creations of David Levinthal as an introduction to his "Spheres of Influence"
snowglobe photographs, and examined the politics of class in art evidenced within the herculean sculpture of Jeff Koons.



Morris' exposed the egress of modern art by uncovering its relative high-brow qualities based in material,
idea and audience. Morris concluded that his goal these days was to make things that people could access or ultimately possess
without the agency of art prohibiting this entrance by building an impenetrable wall of aura, which has been
the de facto formula of art built on proclamations and patriarchies of mastery, one-of-a-kinds, and authentic originals.
Morris' hybrid puzzle-piece sculptures, constructed by combining similar die-cut puzzles and building fantastical
surfaces of stock imagery, satirized the condition of the art object.




Morris ended the evening with Christina Ayala (his partner) handing out a selection of "Missing"
Idea Cookies, ceremoniously sealed in plastic wrapping, which included Morris' drawings of missing people
from mailed circulars, elegantly printed on the icing.


Morris concluded that our infotainment culture of the TV and subsequent news media of the spectacular
have developed a fetish for producing stories on the 'missing". A "missing" I imagine, that is a seductive proposition
in relation to a world that is so very dislocated in its present tense.

What has elevated the status of "missing" to realm of celebrity ?

--Kenneth Jones 3/23/04

Posted: Tue - March 23, 2004 at 01:14 PM        

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