Matt Kenyon Artist talk

Christian Aranas

Art 381

Joseph Delappe

I attended the artist talk held by Matt Kenyon who spoke about his various projects. I thought this artist talk was definitely interesting. I found Matt to be somewhat of an artist that loved creating inventions. His work spoke volumes by itself and I thought that was pretty intense. One of his projects was a self-sustaining plant that would water itself if and only if the stock market for, I believe, Home Depot was doing well. I thought that was genius especially because he bought the plant form Home Depot! Ironic that they sell plants but their stock couldn’t keep the plants alive. This just showed how many plants were killed by Home Depot alone due to them buying so much but not being able to provide a proper home for them.

Another one of Matt’s projects I found amazing was the scanner project he did. In this particular project he used himself as a container for the art. He put a scanner in his mouth and would scan certain things he ate. It was interesting how he had gone out of his way to get the side of his mouth pierced just so he can create art. I loved the concept and it showed the deception of those scanner companies that would track how people ate.

The most impactful piece that Matt created however would definitely be his ode to civilian casualties in Iraq. The catch for this piece was that it was a secret memorial to these poor civilians that government could care less about. It truly made and impact especially when he showed us about 3 or so pages front and back of names of those killed. How he did that you ask? By creating the lines used to write sentences as the template for the names. Such tiny names and you look at these pages and wonder how many lives were sacrificed, uncared for, and recklessly taken for a war that make no sense. How epic this piece spoke to me and it made me feel like writing a letter to the government on the same exact paper then asking them to take a microscope to read aloud the names they didn’t care or know about.

            Matt is a creative artist and that’s what I enjoyed most about his artist lecture. I hope he continues to speak volumes through his work and continue to impact the world about their senselessness.