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U of M BFA Group,
Hot Air/Red Light/Hot Night
  • Photograph courtesy the artists
  • Photograph courtesy the artists
  • Photograph courtesy the artists
  • Photograph courtesy the artists
  • Photograph courtesy the artists

The BFA students at the University of Minnesota – Jill Burchill, Genevieve Chamberland, Christopher Charbonneau, Sam Fuentes, Joe Kaercher, Emily Lynch, Meena Mangalvedhekar, Vong Vang, with Prof. Chris Larson – will create a huge inflatable lava lamp structure that squeezes in the middle, a cell in mid-cytokinesis. A red inflatable: red hot, red moon, blood moon, phantom of the night viewable from a distance (beacon or accent to skyline) and viewable from up close (inside a darkened skyway). Multiple inflatable plastic blobs lit red, something that references lava lamps, inflated into something like a giant globule or cell dividing. Encountering it, one encounters a monolith, a giant cyclopic mountain of hot air pulling energy from its college location.

It’s a monument to unrealistic sexual ambition. It is accompanied by Barry White. Barry White is playing but it’s just the instrumentals. Barry White as lubricant; depends on voice: take a way the voice and the scene is vulnerable and abrasive. The base is up and the scene is tense. One waits for Barry’s voice. An agonizing, anxious chasm to fill, fill with words, shaking voice and unshaking action Barry’s voice is silent. But in the Skyway it is loud and full, muffled by the voices of visitors that have come see the lava lamp inflatable up close. From inside the skyway things are safe and clear and informed. Outside there is sex, the night, and hot air.”

Presented by the Art Department at the University of Minnesota