September 04, 2009 — October 04, 2009
Luis Gispert: Smother
Towers of thumping speakers, an opulent Miami mansion, and the twisted ways of a domineering matriarch color the atmosphere of multi-media artist Luis Gispert’s recent film Smother (2006–07). Ambulating between the real and the surreal, this 26-minute film follows an 11-year-old boy’s sojourn through an intimidating, and at times violent, adult world in an effort to overcome the adolescent bonds that bind him to mother and home. Within this fractured dreamscape, the artist intertwines autobiographical narratives with an ongoing exploration of the aesthetic and social codes of urban/street culture, links between desire and artifice, and the ambiguous socioeconomic power structures that frame contemporary human condition through a lens of fear, aggression, and domination.
Born in 1972 in Jersey City, NJ, and raised in Miami, FL, Luis Gispert currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT, and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL. Gispert’s work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions, including shows at Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, CA; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City; and the Salina Art Center in 2007, in the exhibition Situation Comedy: Humor in Recent Art.Starting September 10
5:30-6:30
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Salina Art Center programs, exhibitions and films are presented in part by the Kansas Arts Commission, a state agency, and by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency which believes that a great nation deerves great art.