September at Purse Building Studios:
Bushwacked and amBushed
an installation by Paul Rutkovsky

Over the last ten years it has become increasingly important for me to use the computer and consumer level technology as playful tools connected to our culture. In our society where technology is viewed as a messiah and a quick fix to solve our social, political, and economic problems, I've put myself in this playground to responsibly take control and play. When I was a fellow at MIT, it was obvious to me that important research was taking place there and much of it in the name of "pure" and detached research. Exploring in a playful manner doesn't necessarily mean being more attached or aware of the world and its ecological dilemma. However, using technology to critically poke fun or satirize how it's used in our culture seems to humanize it, and allows us to view or critique it from a different perspective.

Bushwhacked and amBushed incorporates bits and pieces of evidence from nature and the manufactured world. Rebus-like constructions appear to have gone haywire, becoming fragmented and very puzzled looking. At first glance the installation seems more like a ruckus of Hollywood/Madison Avenue confusion---sounds of radio and television commercials coming from mini-speakers, hamburgers and buns, plastic figures of World Wrestling stars, Ninja Turtles, and Toxic Crusaders rotating on small motors as stage lights illuminate the event from below. George and Jeb Bush (or sometimes spelled Busch, as in the beer) can be seen cavorting with the menagerie of characters. The sound, light, and bombastic imagery has no beginning, middle, or end. The sound takes on a monotonous, white noise, background effect merging into the numbing and pleasurable experience of a warm bath.

Detail from installation

R utkovsky has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibits at DeMedia, Belgium; Galeria EL, Poland; the Kitchen Center and Franklin Furnace, N.Y.C.; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); Nexus Gallery, Atlanta; University of Rhode Island; Real Art Ways (RAW), Hartford, CT; Connecticut College; and Ohio University. His TV TOWERS installation has been exhibited at Silliman College, Yale University; Elizabeth Park, Hartford; Atlanta Arts Festival; and Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.

He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and the Florida Cultural Affairs Department. He is editor/publisher of the satiric tabloid paper, GET DOO DAAA FLORIDA, and has also published three books, COMMODITY CHARACTER; I AM SIAM; and GET, THE BOOK. Rutkovsky was an artist in residence at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, N.Y. (1986); a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987); and Harvard University (summer 1989).

Detail from installation

He was also a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, N.H. (summer 1988); at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (summer 1989); and an artist-in-residence at Light Work in Syracuse, N.Y. (summer, 1991), where he worked within the community to produce a computer animation sequence created by HIV positive individuals. In 1992 Rutkovsky participated in an international telecommunications project at the new Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In the fall of 1993 Rutkovsky had a solo exhibition and conducted a seminar on art & technology at Northern Illinois University. In the spring of 1994 Rutkovsky had a solo exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil and in 1995 a solo show at the 621 Gallery in Tallahassee. He also participated in a national exhibition TECHNO SITE at the University of Dayton in 1997. He is working on the next issue of Doo Daa Florida and a series of Appliances for the Future that are included in the exhibition, ART BYTES at the Walt Whitman Museum, Camden, NJ, from May 3 to June 19, 1998. Rutkovsky is presently the director of the graduate program in the Department of Art at Florida State University.

Yet another detail