Bruce Tapola: Paintings for Germans, Sculpture for Snobs
October 13, 2007 - January 27, 2008
Onofrio Gallery
Bruce Tapola’s paintings explore the meaning and experience of images after their original context and history are removed. His artistic process often begins with the selection of photographic source material, some aspect of which is compelling to the artist, for altered representation. The photographic images that inform his work are derived from a variety of sources, such as textbooks, magazines, and found images. Because photographic images are used to communicate a vast range of content, Tapola’s selected images, while in their original context, can be anything from the banal to the sensual, the familiar to the strange, the important to the trivial, and the tragic to the humorous. The artist then further isolates the source image from its context, thereby transforming it in his work. Tapola explains that “The resulting paintings have been likened to the experience of thumbing through someone else’s photo album: we might sense a story but, having no access point, we are left with floating images in an alien world. It is my hope that these paintings/objects create a dialogue between the figurative and the abstract, the rapidly created and the carefully controlled, the known and the unknowable.” Because the images in his paintings are void of connection to the original context that gave them meaning, they may seem somehow familiar yet are likely not recognizable, allowing for numerous interpretations. His painterly techniques, such as use of a soft, muted palate, and minimalist techniques add to the ambiguity and universality of the images.
about the artist
Bruce Tapola received his bachelor's degree from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and his Master of Fine Art degree from Montana State University in Bozeman. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Milwaukee Institute of Art, CSPS, Cedar Rapids, IA, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, Locust Projects, Miami, Franklin Artworks, Minneapolis, as well as "I'm with Stupid," a collaborative installation executed with his wife, Melba Price, and his daughter, Oakley Tapola, at SOO Visual Art Center, Minneapolis. He received the McKnight Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship in 1994 and 2000. He currently serves on the faculty at St. Cloud University in Minnesota.