ArtMeta.org x Night Gallery

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack leverages found objects and abstract gestures in active explorations of memory, aesthetic possibility, and personal connection. Icy pops are incorporated into assemblages the artist refers to as “charged bricolage:” wooden crosses are overlaid with tubes of unfrozen popsicles, and the passing of late afternoon light through the melted juice has the effect of stained glass. Though clearly influenced by religious iconography, the Corpus series is intended to be fluid in meaning; the work (literally) stands open to interpretation.

The idea of reincarnation animates Gaitor-Lomack’s approach to the traditions of the readymade and the assemblage, as objects are reclaimed, reinterpreted, and given new life. This work featured a found chair with a found American Express card inserted between layers of plastic on the seat.

From the title and screws rising from the seat, we see the work to be metaphorical; only those with the resolve to be an artist can withstand the discomfort that will inevitably follow one’s actions. The found materials that permeate this body of work seems to come to the artist at the right moments—less through divine intervention than through an openness to chance and a reverence for serendipity.

The work has a haunting aura, as if a ghost could emerge from the broken screen at any moment. The water bottle has ashes in it, collected from fires Gaitor Lomack used to burn in his studio every Monday. Ashes evoke devastation, not unlike the damage done to the TV screen. The work is a still life: belt, ball, Marcus Garvey flier; VHS tapes of classic films known for violence, racism, and sexism.

There is a narrative tension between adult and child in the work: it’s suggested that the child broke the TV with the ball, and was consequently punished with the belt. The traumatic nature of the films invokes the normalization of violence and prejudice via media and how the household object of the television is imbued with the quotidian nature of violence.