The Anchor – March 18, 2013

Picture this: a giant, red wax candle, standing taller than you, commanding your attention. Its base is white and numerous flames flicker from the wick. Now, replace those flames with wax models of remote controls, and the base with a color wheel of miniature wax TVs facing inward as if paying homage to the candle. You have just mentally pictured one of  the pieces in the Bannister Gallery exhibition “Richard Goulis: You Were Just Mine.”

If you haven’t already heard of him, Richard Goulis is a multidisciplinary artist involved in the local art scene. Goulis is a graduate of RISD and is perhaps best known for his controversial and “grandiose” performance art featuring stunts such as the encasement of “his hands and head in a block of plaster.”

Remnants from these performances make an appearance in the Bannister Gallery exhibit. One example is the “Mummified America,” a dummy corpse ironically wrapped in and punctured with American flags, placed in a casket called the “Red Box.” However, these performance props are not the main focus of the exhibit. I had the opportunity to question Goulis about these political pieces at the Gallery reception Thursday night, to which he replied, “At the time it was my duty. I feel now that I can be less political, involved more in what’s in front of me. I’m involved in the community rather than [trying to] change the world…But [the political stuff] informed a lot of what I do now, which is why I included it.”

Instead of politics, Goulis has focused his attention on technology, and particularly, on the television set. The majority of the exhibit is devoted to this iconic symbol of modern day culture; old universal remote controls carefully arranged together, provoking the viewer to pay more careful attention to this everyday object and what it represents…

What does it represent? Apparently, a “false sense of control,” leading a person to believe they have control over the television when, in fact, the television has control over us. It may sound like a Sci-Fi movie conspiracy, but looking at Goulis’ pieces, you can’t help but feel it’s kind of the truth. Hence, the enormous candle sculpture I described earlier, a piece called “Enlighten” as in “En-LIGHT-enment.” Just as the television is our modern source of information gathering and entertainment, it is also an all-consuming and wasteful presence; so too is this candle-shrine which “must burn and destroy itself to aid us in seeing this way.”

The candle might be a “shrine” to technology, but the television also takes center stage as “World’s Greatest Mother.”

“World’s Greatest Mother” is an old-fashioned television set covered with “World’s Greatest Mother” pressed flower placards, in front of which sits a single old chair, covered with children’s books and surrounded by large spools of thread. A giant spool of thread stands at the opposite end of the room, which suddenly functions as a machine with a great buzzing sound that pulls two long threads out from the top of the television, across a ceiling crisscrossed with thread, back to the turning spool. Meanwhile, colored lights flicker hypnotically on the TV screen. In effect, the ironically-titled “World’s Greatest Mother” is an almost nostalgic vision of the television from a child’s perspective, while also warning against the danger of a child watching too much TV.

Along with the idea of technology is an undercurrent theme of time: dispersed between the various remote controls and TV sets are pieces essentially “frozen in time.” “GUT,” a mutilated scrap of technological something that appears to have been dredged up from the sea, hangs from the ceiling next to “World’s Greatest Mother.”

When asked where he finds all of these miscellaneous objects he makes the centerpiece of his works, Goulis replied with a simple, “everywhere.” “You have stuff in your car,” he went on, “that you could use as artwork.”

Heck, you can even ask a guy for a piece of a Sleepy’s Mattress sign and turn it into art. Or at least, Richard Goulis can.

Discarded letters from Sleepy’s Mattress is transformed into the emphatic “YES,” a bright red neon sign that glows from the back wall of the exhibit. Once again, Goulis proves that he can “collect discarded materials and reassemble them into art.”

If you want to check out Goulis’ exhibit in the Bannister Gallery—and I recommend you do—the exhibit will run until March 29. In fact, the closing date of the exhibit will feature a one-time performance that will “animate the exhibition and make it more tangible for the viewer,” according to Bannister Gallery Director James Montford. So if you missed the reception, March 29 will be another great chance to go. Gallery hours are from Tuesday through Friday, from noon until 8 p.m.

– See more at: http://theanchoronline.org/riclife/2013/03/18/technological-guts-and-remote-control-candle-shrines-richard-goulis-bannister-gallery-exhibition/#sthash.k3VyMfiD.dpuf