What does it mean to be an American? For Mexican-born artist Dami’aacute;n Ortega, the answer is the title of his ongoing exhibit in Boston: Do It Yourself. The exhibit, on display until Jan. 18 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, takes a giddy, nearly old-fashioned view of the Americas as a bastion of ingenuity ‘- even as it sneaks in some social criticism.
The exhibit feels less like an art gallery and more like a playroom (I had to be reminded by a guard not to touch anything). As part of Ortega’s ‘Autoconstruction, Bridges and Dams’ series, chairs, tables and other household items are piled on top of each other, resembling childhood forts. A 1989 Volkswagen Beetle is suspended mid-air, with each part, from the engine to the hubcap, separated from the shell (Ortega, according to the museum, was inspired by a repair book he owned ‘in which every piece of the car was presented separately, as a didactic sketch for do-it-yourself repair’).
Ortega was once a political cartoonist, which may explain why his best pieces seem to have punch lines. A long line of pennies, held together by tape, snakes across the gallery floor. This is whimsical by itself, but the story behind it ‘- in which Ortega, given a hundred dollars to spend on food, decides instead to use it in art ‘- adds a new, welcome dimension to the piece (called ‘100 Dollars Diet’).
Another piece, ‘America New Order,’ is a puzzle constructed out of 40 bricks, stacked in a square, with numbers from one to 40 on their backs. A diagram on the wall shows how the painting on the front of the bricks (which reads ‘America’ when assembled properly) can be jumbled and made illegible, even when it appears the numbers are in order.
Several times, Ortega veers into heavy-handedness. One piece has three oil barrels spinning on top of each other. It’s called ‘False Movement (Stability and Economic Growth).’ Get it? In another room, entitled ‘Nine Types of Terrain,’ a looping collection of film reels recreates Sun Tzu’s The Art of War using bricks.
This isn’t to say, however, that all his attempts at political commentary fail. Some of them delight, and do so by subverting classic American imagery. A case in point is ‘120 Days,’ which uses 120 hand-blown Coca-Cola bottles. Taking advantage of the similarity between the bottle’s shape and the shape of a woman, Ortega distorts their shapes in tortuous, sexually charged ways, mimicking the effect of the leering man’s gaze. The piece, like Ortega’s best work, balances a sense of playful materialism with a more subversive subtext.
The ICA is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Admission is $10 for students and free on Thursdays after 5 p.m.
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