Would Michelangelo have posted on Instagram if he were alive today, or would Andy Warhol’s self-portraits be labeled as selfies? These are a few questions that were amusingly alluded to through artwork at the Lens Gallery in Boston’s South End on Friday. Sam Kontny, a 30-year-old artist by day and bartender by night, had his first solo gallery exhibit titled “Double Entendres,” which juxtaposed portraits of the past and present.
The literally underground art gallery on the buzzing art scene of Harrison Avenue was jammed with young professionals. The appropriately-named Lens Gallery focused in on both the images we are saturated with today in social media, and iconic images from the past.
Kat Ely, a 30-year-old Cambridge native and owner of the Lens Gallery, met Kontny at Green Street, the bar at which he works, and was inspired to display his work. The Lens Gallery is a side project to Ely’s company Clear Design Lab, a product design studio.
“We show a range of art,” Ely said. “I really liked Sam’s work because it deals with modern technology, a lot of photo editing and social media. Sam juxtaposes this with art history, which is really interesting, and fits in with our theme of art and design and technology.”
Kontny works with silkscreen and layers current images of his own with classic images from art history. For example, one image displayed Michelangelo’s famous “Pieta” superimposed over a selfie taken in front of a Picasso painting. All of this was combined into one image within an Instagram frame.
Andrew Edman, a 28-year-old resident of Cambridge and co-founder of Clear Design Lab and the Lens Gallery, oversaw the exhibit opening.
“I love it,” Edman said. “Sam takes slices from different points in history and compresses them. High and low culture has never been closer than it is now. We’re all contributors, and kids have never been so visual into adulthood as they are now.”
Kontny adds a very playful, tongue-in-cheek touch to his artwork. The juxtaposition between dull selfies and the classic historical images comments on the way we create as a generation. We don’t live in a time where creating an image of self through classic mediums like sculpture or oil paint is the only way to go. With all of these options in technology we have today, Kontny said it is interesting to look at how we decide what is art and what is just another image on social media.
“My latest work plays a lot with ideas of portraiture through the ages in regards to the development of technology,” said Kontny. “I’ve been comparing the ideas of selfies as portraiture and juxtaposing this with ancient forms of portraiture. Ancient Greek sculptors sculpted their idols out of bronze stone, and I’m calling selfies the new idolatry. I’m taking the ideas of technology and running with them.”
Presenting the self on social media is overpoweringly what we as children, young adults and young professionals are exposed to, Kontny said. The new technologies we use for portraiture such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat make these representations quick and numerous.
The speed at which modern technology allows us to create these images provides so many more options than in the past. Kontny said he doesn’t necessarily see this change as negative, but simply as a new way of looking at things. In fact, Kontny implied that his mix of past and present methods creates a new paradigm.
“Don’t get hung up on tradition,” Kontny said. “It’s important to be aware of what tradition consists of. It’s most important to evolve and embrace all of the options that we have as a culture in regards to technology and means of creation.”
