Aliens, Greeks descend on Johnson Artist-in-Residence Will Villalongo presents his work

Author: Lauren Smith

Aliens, decapitations, Cupid and Greek mythology all figure into the work of Christian A. Johnson Artist-in-Residence Will Villalongo in his current Johnson Gallery exhibition of work completed during his residency.

The show consists of five cut velour pieces, one acrylic and cut paper on velvet painting and a video of a performance piece. Villalongo said he is "taking Western mythological characters and exploiting them" by combining traditional images from mythology with alien-like forms and UFOs. "I call it a process of colonization. The aliens allow me to have a sort of image that stands for the act of taking and destroying and colonizing Western art history. [The aliens] come in and rape and pillage and fornicate and make an alien-Greek mythology hybrid," he said.

The largest piece in the exhibit was created by painting figures on paper and collaging them onto a canvas covered with velvet. The flora and plant life in the piece were painted directly onto the surface with acrylics. It depicts a scene similar to the cut velour pieces, involving human figures interacting with alien-like forms.

The pieces, with the exception of the video, are exciting and stimulating. Villalongo, with his grotesque and often mutilated figures, creates a terrifying world that immediately elicits an emotion from the viewer. The emotion produced is not always pleasant, but who says art has to be pretty?

A narrative flows throughout his work and, though there does not seem to be a continuous story linking the pieces as one moves throughout the gallery, it cannot be denied that each piece is enlarging on Villalongo's theme of destruction. He conveys the destruction in an almost comical fashion, with decapiated women's heads laying abandoned on the ground and women in bikinis interacting with the tentacles of an octupus-like alien. The characters are even drawn in a comic book style which adds to the feeling that what we are witnessing is like the chaotic, apolyptic scenes often depicted in sci-fi comics. The fire, the screaming women, the sexually predatory aliens - all are elements of the last scene of a sci-fi cartoon.

The science fiction aspect of Villalongo's work disappears in the video taped performance piece playing around the clock on one wall of the Johnson Gallery. The performance took place at the Studio Museum in Harlem and was the first piece of its kind for Villalongo. The video, entitled "Arsenal," is a 45 minute performance edited down to 12 minutes. Villalongo said, "The basis [in choreographing the performance] is wanting to make the characters and some of the imagery that happen in a painting come alive. It's not about a detailed narrative, but taking the stillness of a painting and shifting it into a type of movement."

The video depicts Cupid preparing for war by cutting notches in knotted, crooked branches, which were brought to him by a woman dressed in a white gown and with a horse's head covering her face. Behind Cupid are several muscians, also wearing animal masks. Villalongo says that the performance music was improvised, but based on John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme."

When viewing the video, one has to wonder, "When are the aliens and the raping and pillaging going to come in?" The thing that makes Villalongo's paintings so great is missing in the performance. Greek characters from well-known tales are indeed in the video, but there is no conflict between them and no alien like, modern day forms. The video is too long and sloppily videotaped. If one had actually witnessed the performance live and in person, it might have been better and perhaps more exciting. The music provided by the video is lovely and perhaps the only aspect of the video worth noting.

Villalongo began to work with these ideas three years ago, though the pieces in the exhibit were created during his residency at Middlebury during this semester. He is currently teaching a course of his own design, "Painting Processes and Concepts" and advising independent theses. Before coming to the College for a residency, Villalongo taught classes at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City and will return there in the fall.

Villalongo received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union in 1999 and later attended the Tyler School of Art at Temple University where he received his Masters of Fine Arts in painting. The most current exhibition of Villalongo's work can be seen at the PS1 Greater New York Exhibition, PS1 Museum in New York City.

In addition to his current residency in Middlebury's Studio Art program, he has also held a residency at the well-respected Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

The exhibit is on view daily from 9a.m to 5p.m. through April 21.