I admit it: Driving out to the Anderson O'Brien Gallery, I was already pre-disliking Trajectory, its new exhibit of 300-some arrow-shaped paintings by Bart Vargas.
Reading World-Herald art scribe Dane Stickney's puff-intensive preview story about Vargas in last Thursday's Go Mag had left me snidely itching to ask, "So, you guys dating, or what?" (Later I realized Stickney had just been taking advantage of the show's expertly-written press materials, so no foul.)
What I had learned from Stickney about Vargas (the 'emerging artist' award, the fact that he did an O, the whole schmeer) had already given me a bad case of this-is-going-to-be-a-long-nightis.
But incredibly, once I stepped inside the gallery and saw the sheer impact of this amazing array of more than 300 arrow-shaped paintings, all finished in an impressive variety of patterns and surfaces, I...
...sorry, no Hollywood ending. I still didn't think much of it.
Slinking around the festive opening, where everyone seemed to be having a fabulous time except me, I thought of dozens of brilliantly snarky things to say about this show, but I've decided not to bother.
The arrows reminded me of the fake-quaint tchotchkes you might see on the wall at Applebee's, but no matter. They look nice in the gallery, he'll probably sell some of them, and other than that there just isn't a lot to say about them.
Besides, Vargas is a young guy – a recent UNO alumnus on his way to art graduate school, if I read the press material correctly – and obviously he's already mastered the technique of coming up with a plausible concept, convincing an important commercial gallery that it's salable, and promoting it to the news media. Successful professional artists need all those skills, so bravo to him and his UNO mentors.
Maybe in grad school somebody will teach him the difference between works of art and art-gallery merchandise, and then everything will be spiffy.
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