Behind the Mask of Time: Memory and Loss As Evolutionary Forces Upon Memory

University of Central Florida STARS

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019

2012

Behind The Mask Of Time: Memory And Loss As Evolutionary Forces Upon Memory

Tommy Bartolillo University of Central Florida

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STARS Citation Bartolillo, Tommy, "Behind The Mask Of Time: Memory And Loss As Evolutionary Forces Upon Memory" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 2095. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2095 BEHIND THE MASK OF TIME: MEMORY AND LOSS AS EVOLUTIONARY FORCES UPON IDENTITY

TOMMY BARTOLILLO B.A. University of Central Florida, 2008

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the School of Visual Arts and Design at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida

Spring Term 2012

ABSTRACT

For the past decade, I’ve been developing a body of work based on the concept of time, in all of its various forms. My medium varies, but my work maintains its steady, overarching philosophies and core aesthetics. The ideas of entropy, growth, decay, evolution, arrested development, fragmented memories, and fugue states; all are considered through a personal filter that borders upon the dark and macabre.

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I would like to dedicate this thesis and the time I have spent working towards it to my father, who I miss very much.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following people for their support, encouragement, and guidance through my time in this program: My Mother & Father, Scott Hall, James Hall, Janae Corrado,

Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, David Isenhour, Carla Poindexter, Ke Francis, and many others. Thank you for your time, your patience, your insight, and your belief in me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii

CHAPTER ONE: BACKGROUND ...... 1

CHAPTER TWO: HISTORY ...... 3

CHAPTE THREE: COMPARISONS/INFLUENCES ...... 29

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ...... 43

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 44

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1: LIL' NIPPERS GRAFFITI STENCIL & PLUSH TOYS, 2007-2008 ...... 3

FIGURE 2: THE AGONY OF SEPARATION: UNSPOKEN, 2008 ...... 6

FIGURE 3: THE AGONY OF SEPARATION: IRREPARABLE, 2008 ...... 7

FIGURE 4: THE AGONY OF SEPARATION: UNTOUCHABLE, 2008 ...... 8

FIGURE 5: SILICON CREATURE INSTALLATION (STILL), 2009 ...... 11

FIGURE 6: SILICON CREATURE INSTALLATION (STILL), 2009 ...... 12

FIGURE 7: (FROM TOP TO BOTTOM) BONSAI BY SHEN SHAOMIN, AND FINGER

PLANT BY MYSELF ...... 14

FIGURE 8: IN DREAMS VIDEO INSTALLATION (STILLS), 2010 ...... 17

FIGURE 9: PRAETORIAN MASK, 2011 ...... 20

FIGURE 10: WEDGE MASK ...... 21

FIGURE 11: FURY MASK, 2012 ...... 22

FIGURE 12: PHEASANT MASL, 2012 ...... 23

FIGURE 13: PRIESTESS MASK, 2012 ...... 24

FIGURE 14: WICKER MASK, 2012 ...... 25

FIGURE 15: DEMON MASK, 2012 ...... 26

FIGURE 16: (FROM TOP TO BOTTOM) WOMAN ONCE A BIRD BY JOEL-PETER

WITKIN , THE TALL WOMAN (STILL) BY MYSELF, AND A STILL FROM

'CLOSER' BY DIRECTOR MARK ROMANEK ...... 32

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FIGURE 17: (FROM TOP TO BOTTOM) PANEL FROM ABARA BY TSUTOMU NIHEI,

AND THE OVERLORD BY MYSELF ...... 35

FIGURE 18: (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) SELF PORTRAIT BY EGON SCHIELE, SPIKE BY

SACHIKO KODAMA, & BONSAI #31 BY SHEN SHAOMIN ...... 38

FIGURE 19:(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) SELF-PORTRAIT BY JOEL-PETER WITKIN,

DRAWING RESTRAINT 17 BY MATHEW BARNEY, AND MOUNT OF MASLOW

BY FOLKERT DE JONG ...... 38

FIGURE 20: (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) HEAD BY NANCY GROSSMAN, AND

CRUSTASCEAN MASK BY MYSELF ...... 39

FIGURE 21:(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) THE EMBRACE BY PATRICIA PICCININNI & IN

BED BY RON MUECK ...... 40

FIGURE 22: FATHER, 2012 ...... 41

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CHAPTER ONE: BACKGROUND

When I was a child, I would play alone a lot. There were many empty places that I would explore. My father worked on machines, so there was a junkyard, a big graveyard of derelict vehicles and engines, behind our house. The junkyard tapered off and blended into a wooded area that I never once saw a live animal in, save for a large, black dog that met me on a path late one night. The junk and derelicts would become overgrown with creepers and strangler figs, and over time the man-made and the organic would fuse. My favorite place to explore was a huge earth-mover, deep in the woods, that a strangler had half-pulled down into the ground as it grew up through it.

Now I’m grown and I miss those places very badly. I left home, thinking that I was lonely and I needed people and I needed new places and that I needed to get away from my father, because I thought I hated him. But when I left I carried those old machines and that empty forest around with me, and they brought me a great deal of comfort. The new places and the new people never brought me happiness like playing alone out there in the dark, and I missed my father very badly, though I still wouldn’t admit that.

Whenever I make art, whether it’s a sculpture or a drawing or anything at all, that blending of the organic and the artificial is always present. I always made art but loved science, and as I grew up

I learned about concepts like futurism and Transhumanism, which is the idea that people have stopped their own evolution but have made a world that constantly evolves, and to cope with this we have to evolve artificially to better fit into our new and protean environment. We already live

1 in a world where people carry pacemakers in their chests, and wire buttons to their brains to calm migraines, but someday we will have gone much farther. The air we’re breathing is almost always contaminated, our water has strange chemicals pumped into it for no good reason, and much of our food isn’t made of anything we can actually digest. Someday, we will have to do something to help us cope with all of that. People are afraid of genetic tampering, but they’ll shoot lasers into their eyes to see better, or staple their stomachs, or get breast implants. Little by little, we’re becoming more okay with being less human. Someday, we’ll be okay with not being human at all. I try to make what that will look like.

CHAPTER TWO: HISTORY

When I first entered the MFA program at the Unversity of Central Florida, I wasn’t even quite out of undergrad. I’d begun a relationship with a digital artist and she had gotten me immersed in the low-brow art scene, so we were making a lot of graffiti and vinyl toys, like those seen in

Figure 1.

Figure 1: Lil' Nippers Graffiti Stencil & Plush Toys, 2007-2008 We were participating in art shows very frequently and all over the country, and though that was what actually got me noticed by my future graduate program in the first place, I wasn’t happy with the artistic level of what I was doing. I didn’t realize how emotionally detached I was from my artmaking ; I thought the problem was the scene I was in. I thought that if I quit making toys

(which I actually loved), and tried to focus on making a higher grade of art, that I’d start feeling fulfilled. I was really foolish back then; I didn’t really know anything at all, about art or myself.

All I knew at the time I entered this program was that I felt restless and discontent. I didn’t see where my problems were really stemming from, and so I dropped all the styles and mediums I was using, and started over from scratch. I always loved