Michael Bell-Smith: Mall, Punk

Kunsthall Stavanger is proud to present Mall, Punk, a solo exhibition by American artist Michael Bell-Smith. The exhibition brings together a selection of the artist’s videos from the last five years, as well as a several new works made for the exhibition.

The title of the exhibition stems from a pejorative term for a fake punk – a punk who buys their clothing at the mall. By embracing a term that few would voluntarily apply to themselves, the artist identifies as an outsider, while pointing to the potential of subversion that employs the products of consumer culture. In his work, Bell-Smith employs the aesthetics, byproducts and systems of commercial design and contemporary visual culture. Utilizing sources from the internet, advertising and popular culture, he highlights the contours of our media environment while simultaneously attempting to subvert (or ‘punk’) those same systems. In the current cultural climate, humans are daily inundated with more data than the mind is capable of digesting. Bell-Smith appropriates this visual media and transforms it into a deadpan critique of itself and the society that produces/consumes it.

The exhibition at Kunsthall Stavanger consists of a series of moving image and sculptural works. In MBS Material (2017), the artist appropriates and re-edits footage from online Google tutorials for the design of user interfaces. Conceived of as a means to ensure a uniform and seamless digital experience, the found footage is liberated from its strictures via Bell-Smith’s rhythmic editing, while the material’s use as a tool of manipulation is re-employed to hypnotic effect.

In another video, Rabbit Season, Duck Season (2014), the artist reanimates familiar characters and sounds to present a moving image essay on identity, dichotomy and media manipulation. In the foyer, stacks of office paper have been transformed into a series of sculptures by means of the artist’s custom-printed wrapping paper. Presented on a single screen, Clouds Clock (2017) acts as a real time-keeping device, pairing a moving digital clock with seamlessly looping stock footage. The video of passing clouds echoes the timelessness of daydreaming while staring out of a window from an office or classroom. The footage creates an uncomfortable juxtaposition with the clock, a concrete reminder of the regimented demands of our real life.

In the works 2x3 (MP) and 3div2 (MP) (2017), Bell-Smith considers the skills and practices we (humans) have lost through our increased dependence on computers. Long-form math (as one learns in school) combines the processes of handwriting and multi-step computation, two skills we cede to computers via typing and the use of calculators. By building computer programs that carefully emulate and animate that process, the artist poignantly and humorously reflects both on that loss and cultural anxieties around computer automation of labor.

In a separate gallery, the video Magic Hands (2012) captures audience attention with a projection of two large disembodied hands that continually produce a series of tricks and sleights of hand, much akin to a traditional magician. These tricks, however, are digital: stock sounds and familiar visuals reworked to surprising effect. One of the newest works by Bell-Smith, One Man Band (2017) presents a sketch of a toy one-man-band appropriated from the animation studio Pixar, animated by the artist as a simple looping gif. The anxious and frantic character stands as a metaphor for both the DIY ethos and the demands of multitasking in contemporary life. De-Employed (2012) presents a kinetic stream of seemingly random imagery: spray-painted designs riddled with bullet holes, a fish tank, a chain-link fence, tropical birds. The images are connected through a repeating template of video transitions, while an oblique poem is presented as subtitles one word at a time. The resulting composite enacts a search for meaning where the resolution is always just around the corner.