by Ken Hunt Steve Brudniak’s sculptures are the sort that, when
subjected to description, evoke more words than necessity or accuracy require.
Even summing up the dualities is something of a chore: There is the use of
laborious craftsmanship on discarded or found objects, the anachronous feeling
of antique design fitted with contemporary electromechanics, the exploration of
spiritual and metaphysical concerns via machine. Yet to say, “Oh, it works on
many levels” is an obvious cop-out. Perhaps the closest explanation is to acknowledge each piece
as its own little world in which taking a look is not nearly enough. The
artworks are stately, often imposing or heavy, and as with most fine art, the
essence is in the details. “Self-Portrait of the Artist in Perpetual
Maintenance” is a cast of Brudiniak’s face mounted within a cabinet, a red dot
of light illuminating the right eye. Airborne particulates, when blown around
the piece, reveal the light to be a laser mounted on the side and manipulated
with mirrors. The light is cast to the center of the piece through the eye of a
tiny demon just below the cabinet opening, envisioning a hypnosis/confrontation
of one’s own darkness. The interactivity is often physical as well. Consider
“Instrument for the Administration of Penance,” in which the viewer is drawn
toward symbols arranged around a waffle iron, and then to a little demon within
the sculpture. One is encouraged to touch it. And then… zap.
Existential angst grounds a number of the pieces. “The
Saturated Well of Baptism” is an elevated bowl containing an inconstant floral
figure, always rising and forming, but never escaping. It is not even a true
object – rather an upswelling of metallic fluid guided by magnets. “The Gulf of
Pandemonium” is a low stone well with graded sides, filled with black oil and
decorated with loose chains. The one chain that is not loose disappears into
the abyss.
A summation of Brudniak’s themes came with the “Amuk Id
Cathedral,” constructed two years ago and shown at sites including Austin’s
Dougherty Arts Center, the Lynn Good Gallery in Houston, San Antonio’s Blue
Star Art Space, and the University of Texas-El Paso. He describes the pieces
therein as explorations of various facets of psychological function, imbued
with iconology from Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. One piece, which has
surfaced around Austin several times since, is a confessional in which two
participants confess to each other via speaker-equipped fighter helmets;
instructions ask the participants to reflect on and articulate their
experiences thereafter.
“What I do is take ideas that are personal; I’m not working
on a level of trying to say something about, for instance, the AIDS virus or
what’s going on in Bosnia or the Republican Party right now,” he elaborates.
“All I want to deal with are issues that have to do with the way I feel. …I
like to make machines that symbolically act as a shaman might use – a rattle or
wand or something to take away problems or sins.” He has exhibited all over
Texas – “except Fort Worth,” he notes – and out-of-state sites including San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Scottsdale, New York’s Alternative Museum, and the
Phoenix airport. The San Antonio Museum of Art recently became the second major
urban museum to add him to their permanent collection, joining the Museum of
Fine Arts in Houston.
Blatant rhetorical question: How does an artist specifically
evoke a theme or reaction in a necessarily abstract form of communication such
as visuals? For instance, fear.
“Fear is a funny thing; you can boil any bad feeling we have
down to fear,” Brudniak responds, pointing to a piece in the living room
entitled “Ulteriorphobia.” At first glance, it appears to be a converted
fireplace, centered around a brass panel with indentations left by two hands.
“[It’s] about fear of anything that’s out there, in the ulterior regions. We’re
basically afraid of what we don’t know – anything in the future that might hurt
us.”
“The first thing that happens when you walk up to the piece
is that you know something’s going to happen when you put your hands in,
because there’s a plug and huge electrical cord going up to a key switch;
people have this anxiety about putting their hands on it. There’s also some
religious items, some saints appearing in the concrete, so there’s this fear of
the ultimate religion and what’s going on with life. And there’s a series of
mirrors inside the hole. You can only see your own eyeball – you can’t see
what’s behind it or around it. So the piece talks about fear, even fear of
yourself, what could happen in the future, or what sort of demons lurk inside
our own minds and egos.”
Eventually he turns the art piece on, and I approach it
hands
outstretched . . . albeit with a teaspoon of hesitation. Just how big is the
shock? What if something malfunctions and I get the Ted Bundy Deluxe Treatment?
Do sweaty palms change the effect? Likewise, he has to goad me into touching
the demon ensconced within “Penance.” Even after careful description and
analysis, fear of the unknown viscerally permeates the viewer’s reaction to the
work. This is the clearest proof yet of the essentially non-verbal mode of
communication Brudniak employs. The electrical charge, by the way, is kind of a
rush.
Brudniak himself is a dualistic personality. He is a
quick-witted and frequently hilarious fellow, yet his creative impulse stems
from periods of emotional crisis. He began sculpting in 1981, after the
dissolution of both his rock band and an intimate relationship. “I was a
musician, trying to be artistic that way, trying to write music more than the
average 4/4 12-bar blues bullshit, and got fairly artistic with that,” he says.
(He presently plays drums in the band Dog Head.) He began sculpting with some
clay he received as a gift, but soon decided that medium had been exhausted. He
acquired a neon sign transformer and started experimenting with sparks, then
Jacob’s ladders (ascending sparks between two electrodes), then incorporated
the machine and a piece of fruit into “Of Misconception, (The Chiquita
Kahoona).” This piece features a banana sending sparks to a staff held by an
angel, and is the prototype for work continuing to this day. “I put a lot of
craftsmanship and fine materials into it; it was a really therapeutic thing for
me, really fun and exciting,” he says. “I felt that I was doing something
original, like I was doing something nobody had ever done before. Which is
probably not true, but at least I felt that way. It spurred me on to try and
use electricity and found objects as a medium.”
No formal or academic training informs his work – his most
recent forays in that field were high-school painting and graphic arts classes.
In the latter, he befriended Wesley Archer, who has since found a certain
measure of success as a director of The Simpsons. “He had a lot of
inspiration for me, because I always liked putting what your ideas are into a
visual format. And there was something exciting about the whole Being an Artist
thing.” Otherwise, he developed through osmosis. “I’ve kind of relied on going
to art museums, and I’ve got some friends who tend to give me their old art
books, but inspiration for me came from seeing the art scene and seeing what
was going on in Texas. The influences were not from seeing pictures.”
Nevertheless, he does point to some artists with whom he has an affinity, such
as Duchamp and Dali.
Craftsmanship being paramount in his work, he is quite
vociferous about certain “experimental” or base strains of contemporary art.
“Art’s a free thing, and you should be able to do anything you want; it’s
freedom of speech really,” he says. “What I get a little irritated about is
when artists will use sloppy, excessively sloppy methods to get a point across,
or really mundane or overused methods. I think it’s obvious when you see work
that’s a rehash. I think trends tend to get in the way of what people are
trying to do or say. You saw in New York, and actually everywhere, in the mid
to late Eighties, a lot people doing the installation thing.
“To fill a gallery with dirt is so overdone, and since it’s
an easy thing to do there are a lot of artists trying to get away with doing
really simple things to get their point across,” he continues. “I think at that
point what they’re trying to do is get attention instead of getting their point
across. Fine art is something that has a little more character to it and a
little more effort behind it than to merely make a quick statement – the
abstract expressionists would, in 10 minutes, finish a painting and call it
their message, but what they were doing was getting across a visual language
that worked and was powerful. I think maybe the first pile of dirt may have
been a powerful visual thing, but the second, third, fourth, fifth, weren’t. I
think originality makes art contemporary, and the craftsmanship makes it
fine.”
Not all Brudniak’s works are so mechanistically inclined. He
is increasingly working with subversive preservations: animals such as squids
and centipedes in antifreeze, placing the luminous green vials in sculptures or
elegant boxes. A project involving a mummified squirrel is in the works. There
is also the odd bricolage of the “Homologous Monstrosities” sculptures, which
weld together animal bones or antlers to found scraps like a clarinet tube. “I
still use things like sparks and electricity now, although I’m starting to cut
down on the technological things,” he says.
In favor of …
“In favor of things that are less breakable,” he laughs.
“Things I don’t have to repair.” n
This article appears in June 2 • 1995 and June 2 • 1995 (Cover).