Opening October 3rd, 6-9pm

SELLOUT art

#456 Northrup King Building

1500 Jackson St. NE

Minneapolis, MN, 55413

SELLOUT continues its ongoing series of three-person exhibitions with TECTONIC / TAPOLA / LAHR. This exhibition features recent work by St. Paul artists Bruce Tapola and Tectonic Industries as well as South Bend, IN artist Jason Lahr. The work explores constructions of personal identity through the filter of pop culture, found images, television, forgotten and fictional histories and language. The combined production of the trio is a bit like thumbing through a pile of discarded art magazines, album covers and Boy Scout manuals dripping in white paint and neon.

BRUCE TAPOLA’s paintings and sculptures explore the meaning and experience of images after their original context and history are removed. His artistic process often begins with the selection of photographic source material, some aspect of which is compelling to the artist. Because photographic images are used to communicate a vast range of content, Tapola’s selected images, while in their original context, can be anything from the banal to the sensual, the familiar to the strange, and the important to the trivial, and the tragic to the humorous. Through his work the image is obscured and isolated from its source, thereby transforming it, while retaining a familiarly open to numerous interpretations.

TECTONIC INDUSTRIES is a collaborative art partnership of the Danish artist Lars Boye Jerlach and the British artist Helen Stringfellow. Tectonic Industries’ work examines the artifice inherent within the creation of the modern myths and belief systems of popular culture. Ultimately these created worlds become a pervasive form of reality, universally meaningful within the mainstream collective memory. At the heart of the investigation lies a fascination with visual, literal, televisual and cinematic pop culture that centers on appearances and narrative. Borrowed language is distorted, manipulated and morphed to heighten the artificial. Referencing immediately identifiable cultural signifiers in conjunction with our seemingly endless quest for self-improvement, tectonic industries create mixed-media installations that scrutinize our all-encompassing desire for instant gratification and immediate satisfaction.

JASON LAHR’s paintings, drawings, and installations integrate darkly comic texts with appropriated images, in ever shifting narratives of identity as constructed by popular culture. Taking their cues from contemporary/postmodern fiction, film theory, and semiotics, the paintings position the viewer at the core of the construction of narrative, weaving an intertextual thread of references and allusions. Simultaneously, the work explores the construction and articulation of masculine identity by/through mass culture as manifested in Generation X and filtered through feminism and identity politics/criticism.

SELLOUT is an artist-run initiative devoted to the exhibition of work by emerging and mid-career artists, as well as independent curators. We focus on small-scaled idea-based works, multiples, and ephemeral projects. The intimate space features a mix of curated group and solo exhibitions as well as innovative community events. The humble scale of the gallery (250 square feet) provides artists with the opportunity to experiment with fresh ideas, pursue new directions, and exhibit alternative, atypical media.

SELLOUT exhibits artists with a distinct vision and commitment to their artistic practice. However, we acknowledge that art exists not in a vacuum, but in a capitalist cultural framework. In addition to regular exhibitions, artists are encouraged to create small, affordable works that are available for purchase in the flat file. Collectors may browse through pieces not only by the current exhibiting artists, but also by the regular roster of artists. Our desire is to support new art collectors and interesting artwork while allowing unique access and interaction between the collector, curator, and artist.