Oliver Lutz To Paint It Black In Texas This Summer

In New York-based Oliver Lutz’s first solo museum show, Paint it Black, Artpace presents an exhibition experience exploring dimensions of contemporary mass spectacle. Austere paintings, cloaking pigments, sound, and surveillance technology implicate the viewer in an installation that deconstructs modes of viewing, cognition, and participation in spectacles, be they art exhibitions or sporting events.

Organized by Artpace Executive Director Matthew Drutt, Paint it Black features six large paintings which appear to be monochromatic to the naked eye. Covered in infrared sensitive pigment, the under-painted imagery is visible only in an adjoining gallery via eleven video monitors connected to ultraviolet surveillance cameras tuned into the main exhibition space. The TV screens reveal realistically rendered scenes culled from photographs taken by Lutz at a NASCAR event at Texas Motor Speedway earlier this year that explore different genres of spectacle and spectatorship.

In one detail revealed via monitor, the artist portrays the archetypal race fan, complete with aviator glasses and headphones. In the sky above, military jets execute a flyover maneuver that launches each NASCAR event at then end of the singing the national anthem. And although the planes are not yet half way over the race course, the subject has become disinterested, signifying the high degree of distraction within the race environment, which saturates fans with multiple, simultaneously occurring events all festooned with logos and messages promoting different commercial products.

The monitors in the “surveillance gallery” also capture visitors to the exhibition space, situating them in the midst of Lutz’s compositions as they contemplate the installation. The superimposition of the exhibition visitor among the race fans forges a connection between the art viewer and NASCAR fan, the gallery and racetrack, spectator and spectacle.

All of the work in the Hudson (Show)Room was commissioned and produced by Artpace San Antonio for the occasion. In addition, a selection of performance videos from 2006 is on display in Artpace’s lobby entrance.

Paint It Black is on view through August 17. For more information, visit www.artpace.org

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