Matt Kenyon Artist Talk

Mat Kenyon came to the University of Nevada, Reno and gave a talk about his art pieces. I would have to say his talk was very interesting and I enjoyed some of the pieces he had to talk about. Some of the pieces he talked about were Tardigotchi, Notepad, and Puddle. 

One of the pieces Kenyon talked about was Tardigotchi, which is an artwork that what two creatures one is alive and it is a water bear called Steven and the other is an avatar creature that is not really alive. They are living inside a sphere that resembles a Tamagotchi toy. This piece was really interesting and I thought it was funny how he put a real life microorganism inside a toy to be taken care of.

Another piece that Kenyon talked about was Notepad. Notepad is an act of protest. Notepad looks like an ordinary yellow Notepad however this notepad when magnified you can see that each line is micro printed with the full names, dates, and location of the deaths of Iraqi civilians on record over the first three years of the Iraq War. I thought that this was very interesting because I would have never thought that micro printing onto paper to make it look completely normal was even possible.

The piece Puddle that Kenyon talked about was probably one of my favorite pieces that he talked about.  Puddle is supposed to just look like a puddle of oil however upon further inspection you can see that there is a word being spelled in the puddle. He was able to make words appear out of the oil, I found this to be very interesting and different.  

Overall I liked Matt Kenyon’s talk hearing about his different pieces and the story behind them was both interesting and funny.