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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Ben Paulus: Definitions @ Dunn Bros. 34th/Hennepin
Wednesday 15 January @ 12:07:34 |
 by John Tribbett
Art, like fashion, travels upward. The raw energy of the emerging artist siphons the creative spark from the street and delivers it to the public eye via the experimental and daring galleries we are blessed to have tucked into the Twin Cities beauty salons, bookstores and coffee shops. Patrons of the Uptown Dunn Bros. are currently being treated to the benefits of the mutually-symbiotic relationship between art and coffee in Ben Paulus’s show, Definitions. His take on this relationship is quite literal.
Joy by Ben Paulus
Paulus playfully captures the psyche of the coffeehouse experience by setting a series of definitions on 24 identically framed parchment-like canvases. This personal dictionary is thickly typed over a backdrop of frenetically placed coffee rings and splatters. Each hanging could be the preserved and antiqued placemats collected from a French café, circa 1950, where Billy Holiday plays on a scratched LP and young writers, full of mad genius, have typed notes for a future novel.
One reads, “HUMAN-facts about humans: 1. Humans are mammals. 2. Humans fight ALL the time. 3. Humans are the only animals capable of: a. recognizing BEAUTY (q.v.). b. making choices. c. FOREGIVENESS (q.v.).” Another defines PORNOGRAPHY as “a medium for nonconsensual sex” and TERRORISM as “a consensual congress in which one party commits an act of violence, and others agree to be afraid.” The entry for LOVE simply says “see under FOREGIVENESS.”
While the work is not overtly political or solely designed as social commentary, it does demand the reader/viewer to rethink the realities lurking behind the words we use as our common literary currency. Paulus dissects the narrative form into its component parts by uprooting individual words and transplanting them into the visual realm. “It is more of a confrontational approach,” he says. “In a book you can close it and not look at it—here you are forced to see it.”
He is adamant his work is not poetry. Still, there is an undeniable poetic interplay at work as his cross-referencing definitions feedback off one another. Scanning the walls you begin to discover subtle twists of meaning woven into the idiomatic web connecting this suspended glossary. His use of this curious form is deliberate. “I can tell you directly what I am trying to say—there is no room for manipulation,” he says.
Definitions challenges the tangled line between literature and visual art. It’s just the sort of cultural domain that makes for good conversation over a cup of coffee.
Definitions continues through the end of January. Dunn Bros. Coffee, 3348 Hennepin Ave., Mpls. 612-822-3292.
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