August 2022 AIR: Lyndon Barrois Jr.
We are excited to share the work of our August Artist in Residence - Lyndon Barrois Jr.
Learn more about their practice and how they use magazines and pop culture to escape and bring a closer understanding of what motivates and influences people
Q & A
Q: WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK TO THAT ‘SAME DAMN DONKEY’?
It’s actually an invented narrative that started as a preposterous question. I’m definitely approaching it with humor, but it’s another opportunity to think about connectivity between different times and spaces. It has also caused me to consider the presence of the donkey as an animal that has been in the background of civilization for thousands of years, just working. There’s a pathos, but also a charm about them. They are derided and made to be silly, but they are incredibly valuable. I am trying to appreciate that.
Q: AS A CHILD, I USED MAGAZINES AND POP CULTURE TO ESCAPE. DO YOU USE THEM TO ESCAPE, BRING YOU CLOSER TO REALITY, OR ARE YOU DECONSTRUCTING THEM TO MAKE A NEW REALITY?
They are definitely used to escape, but they also bring me to a closer understanding of what motivates and influences people. They (mags and popular culture) each have a potential to influence and damage mass culture because of their reach. In my work, I used to think that constructing a new reality was possible by rendering alternatives, but recently I have been drawn to showing things as they are in different frameworks, to question what we accept as normal; i.e. how fictions affect our lived realitie.
Q: YOU SAY PEOPLE PROJECT OUR DESIRE ONTO FASHION IMAGES. WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT SAYS ABOUT OUR CULTURE? DO YOU THINK PEOPLE NEED NEW IDEAS TO INSPIRE US?
Fashion images in some ways are trying to push us to see beyond what we can imagine, but they also prey on our desire to live in them, to become them, which is both exciting and dangerous. They are much glossier and fantastical than many of our everyday lives. Politically this has enormous potential, but when an image is the sole objective, it can be quite violent.
Q: HOW DO YOU DECONSTRUCT THE MANIPULATIVE MOTIVES OF POPULAR MEDIA? HOW DO YOU THINK THE MEDIA MANIPULATES THE MASSES?
One would think that we would be more skeptical of what we see given better access to image creation and manipulation, but false information still occurs, and social memory is still quite short. I mostly find it fun to make connections between things that wouldn’t seem to be connected; an image from a film or ad with some specific historical fact. It is a way of asking questions about culture or history through a language of images that many people can recognize. Popular media provides an accessible entry to more complicated conversations.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CINEMA PERIOD, AND DO YOU GET INSPIRED BY CONTEMPORARY CINEMA?
I quite plainly love watching movies, so I am just as excited about The Batman, and as I am about The Last Black Man in San Francisco (more so the latter, actually). But I have been really excited to go back to the technicolor films of the 40s and 50s, and pre-code era films of the 30s. There’s just an interesting texture and pace to old films, and a simplicity to the storytelling that I’d like to learn from today.
LYNDON BARROIS JR.
Lyndon Barrois Jr. (b. New Orleans, LA) is an artist and writer based in Pittsburgh, PA as an Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He is half of LAB:D, with artist Addoley Dzegede, with whom he has collaboratively staged two exhibitions, and co-authored a book of essays (Elleboog, at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2019). Using magazines, advertising, cinema, and vernacular imagery as primary subjects of inquiry, Barrois’ multimedia practice breaks down and re-configures the languages of print, design, and popular culture in order to investigate underlying ideology, ethics, and conceptions of value. He enjoys cooking for others, film clubs, reading groups, and exploring cities on foot.
Recent solo exhibitions include Others Who Struggle with Nature at Rubber Factory NYC, Vague November at Van Eyck Open 2020, and Zaal 8 at Kasteel Oud Rekem in Belgium. Barrois Jr. received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2013), and his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (2006). He has recently completed residencies at Loghaven in Knoxville, the Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (Netherlands), Fogo Island Arts in Newfoundland, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland.