Richie Budd, Lu Chunsheng, and Taryn Simon will be showing new work at Artpace on Thursday, Nov 6 from 6:30 to 8.
San Antonio-based artist Richie Budd fuses together a multitude of objects to create sensory interactive sculptures. By spewing foam, popping popcorn, and emitting steam Budd’s tangled masses of electronics, everyday objects, and lights evoke emotional reaction similar to a Significant Emotional Experience (S.E.E.), a term coined by sociologist Dr. Morris Massey that defines “any major, fully associated, highly charged emotional event wherever it occurs.” Budd’s installations result in a three-fold experiential process: first, stimulation; second, association and imprint; and finally, recollection through trigger stimuli encountered after the interaction.
Chinese artist Lu Chunsheng’s video and photographic works integrate documentary-style imagery with fantasy-based narratives to hinge the border between reality and fiction. His characters explore absurd landscapes, ebbing in and out of worlds defined by transition and change. Chunsheng employs traditional methods of Chinese filmmaking; through this time-honored method the artist amplifies his surreal aesthetic, resulting in a highly theatrical, disorienting presentation. His narratives are steeped in symbolism, mysteriously avoiding definition and coyly defying categorization.

Taryn Simon’s calculated, formal photographs, taken with a large-format 4×5 camera, combine provocative aesthetic with informative narrative. Her images give stage to people, places, and topics that are otherwise overlooked. Simon’s recent series An American Index of the Hidden and the Unfamiliar, aims “to look inward to find the hidden and unfamiliar, the out-of-view and off-the-radar within American borders.” At a time when America has focused much of its energy on searching for hidden locations outside of its borders, Simon has turned a thoughtful eye toward the undefined American way of life.

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