Local
artist ponders psychology
By Yoshinori Okada
Summer On-line Forty-Niner
Students
wandering to the University Art Museum this
summer will see Brad Spence’s “psychology
today: centric 63” on display until July
20.
“Making this series of paintings was personally
therapeutic, it helped me address some issues
from my childhood,” said Brad Spence, Los
Angeles-based artist. “Although I was never
properly diagnosed, my research leads me
to believe that I was mildly autistic as
a child.”
Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1969, Spence
grew up moving with his family from a city
to another, 11 times as he remembers. Yet,
his early days were spent in the incommunicative,
tuned-out state associated with autism,
and his memories were faint and lifeless,
he said.
“Actually I can remember very little of
my childhood, I believe my first memories
are from 11 or 12 years old,” Spence said.
“The absence of these memories partially
explains what I do as an artist.”
He started his career as an artist rather
late. The time came for him while he was
a freshman at University of Florida pursuing
his bachelor’s degree in English.
“An older student showed me posters by M.C.
Escher in a dorm room, Spence said. “I was
fascinated by the ability of a single image
by Escher to propose philosophical questions
about the universe. I learned about his
work, which then led me to other artists,
eventually, I wanted to become an artist
myself,” he said.
Spence started creating artwork in his senior
year and later decided to pursue art, which
came naturally and received an MFA from
the California Institute of the Arts, he
said. He has completed “hundreds and hundreds”
of artwork ever since, he said.
A recent exhibition, “psychology today:
Centric 63,” at University Art Museum of
Cal State Long Beach showcased seven pieces
of Spence’s artwork. While he had had one-person
exhibitions at galleries, such as Shoshana
Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica, and group
exhibitions in many art institutions in
and out of California, an exhibition solely
devoted to his artworks was the first time.
“The title [of the exhibition] refers to
the popular magazine, Psychology Today,
and initiates questions about what is the
potential for art to be subjective or psychological
in the year 2003,” Spence said.
Spence reviewed professional and popular
journals and psychology publications published
from the 1960s and 1970s to understand what
his childhood was like — Illustrations in
those journals provided him with the inspiration
for paintings in this exhibition, he said.
He was also quite influenced by fiction,
such as “Bartleby the Schrivener” (1853)
by Herman Melville and “The Depressed Person”
(1998) by David Foster Wallace, which relates
to his interests in the exhibition, he said.
Mary-Kay Lombino, curator of exhibitions,
said, “Known for his paintings that poke
fun at art, philosophy, and now pop psychology,
Spence reconfigures historical documents
so that we can understand them anew, through
contemporary eyes.”
“The Tragedy of Misdiagnosis,” one of his
works on display, shows the image of a small
boy projected on falling blocks. Spence
said this illustrates an individual shattered
and unable to sustain a unified sense of
self.
The boy “was not properly diagnosed, in
part, due to classifications. If he received
the proper diagnosis, perhaps, he could
be treated and become a person in less disarray.
As a painting it is now up to the viewer
to put the blocks in a more functional order,”
he said.
Another six large-scale pieces all done
with airbrush, including “Giving up on Life”
and “The Austic Child,” measuring 81 by
66 inches and 81 by 132 inches respectively,
were displayed.
Spence aims to get viewers saddened and
think about moments of hopelessness in their
own lives and their profound inability to
express these moments through his art pieces,
he said.
University Museum’s Centric, began in 1981,
is a series of small timely exhibitions
dedicated to introducing work by individual
artists that has not previously been shown
in this area.
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