UNLV ACQUISITION CHAT: BRIAN PORRAY '=/’\0SCILL4T0R/’\='

Brian Porray
=/’\0SCILL4T0R/’\=” 
Synthetic polymer, 
spray paint, paper on panel.
24'  X 24"
2012

=/’\0SCILL4T0R/’\=” is particularly interesting for so many reasons, but on a personal level I feature it in tours with the younger kids-and the younger the better. By pure observation, they intuitively pick up on the pyramid theme without knowing that the piece references the Las Vegas Luxor. 

After they've named every shape and color, and when I tell them it is about that big glass pyramid on the strip with the beam of light shooting out of the top- they go there- and hypothesize from which point of view the artist painted it. 

One first-grader said the artist must have been painting upside-down because the drips of yellow paint drips "defy gravity."  We talk about how it is not a picture of the Luxor, but the experience of it. 

- Alisha Kerlin

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From an interview with the artist on Maake

​What part of growing up in Las Vegas most dramatically influenced your aesthetic as an artist?

I’m a desert person. Las Vegas is probably the place where my paintings make the most sense. When people find out that I was raised there it usually squares with what they see in my work. I can’t really see it myself but I know it’s there. It’s hard for me to fully understand what the connection is or how it functions—I’m so close to all of it. When I think about Las Vegas it’s through such a personal lens… I’m thinking about my home, I’m thinking about the kind of stuff we all think about when we think about home. Except in my particular case the backdrop is Las Vegas.

A few years ago I made a body of work that was, at least formally, based on the Luxor Hotel. Actually, I was making paintings about a specific experience I had while looking at the Luxor—a very foreboding and drug-induced sense of terror and wonder that I had while looking up at that big black pyramid. Maybe this is how my relationship to Vegas functions—as an architectural or physical reference for a specific set of personal experiences. I suppose these experiences that I’m referencing tend to be a bit psychedelic in nature, but it’s difficult to say if that has to do with me personally or with Vegas as a place. I imagine it’s both. It could be that Vegas and I amplify each other in my paintings. That seems like a good situation.

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From 2014, Los Angeles Times art critic David Pagel on Porray.
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​On the threshold of being out of control, each of his compositions is all the more potent for its precariousness. Staid paintings these are not. Imagine 500 people pressing themselves into a subway car built for 150 and then being happy to be on board. This gives you an idea of the pressure Porray brings to his paintings, whose density invites second, third and fourth looks.

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Recent Acquisitions" is the current exhibition of recently acquired works for UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum and Las Vegas Art Museum. While The Barrick posts items from the collection on their Facebook page, Alisha Kerlin, UNLV Collections Manager, and I will share thoughts on selected works on Thursdays.  "Recent Acquisitions" runs through September 19.

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Previous tours from Alisha Kerlin, Collections Manager, Barrick Museum.
Daniel Habeggar
Jack Endewelt
Robert Beckmann