Oh6 Art Collective: Mission Control
Angstrom Gallery
Charissa N. Terranova
The young artists of Oh6 Art Collective ride the roiling waves of consumer acquisition and artistic cooperation. As provocateurs of avant-garde possibility, they show that the dynamic logic of collecting and collectivity is a vibrant force of cultural production. Moving between extremes—from gallery obsequy to disinterested creativity—they give blunt form and cockeyed life to what was once referred to as the groupuscule: those activist groups of yesteryear better known as the Black Panthers, the Maoists or the May ‘68ers. Unlike these political actors whose righteous indignation fueled the fires of protest, the artists of Oh6 tumble and swing on the ruins of a playground, circumscribed by what Peter Sloterdijk famously called an “enlightened false consciousness.”
While Oh6 may well know the norm of political mendacity that currently holds hypnotic sway over this country, theirs is not an urgent pursuit of political agency or radical upheaval. They are not altogether cynical; nor are they apathetic. Instead, Oh6 bears an attitude of self-assertion, emerging from the fog of passivity. They are cannily kynical (from the Greek kyon, meaning “dog”). Like a pack of mongrels, their attitude is that of the dog philosopher of antiquity, Diogenes, who “farts, shits, pisses, masturbates on the street…[and] parodies the stories of gods and heroes, eats raw meat and vegetables, lies in the sun, fools around with the whores and says to Alexander the Great that he should get out of his sun,” muses Sloterdijk in Critique of Cynical Reason. Theirs is a wildly fertile brand of schizophrenic kynicism—at once fugitive yet ever present, like a monkey on the back of society.
Illustrated by their Nike-infused motto of “MAKE IT. SHOW IT. GET IT,” Oh6 has a no-holds-barred energy. The group first came together in July 2004, and in less than a year has staged three shows including Mission Control at Angstrom Gallery. Their shows are often quick and clean, lasting but twenty-four hours in the classic, evanescent avant-garde fashion. There are roughly sixteen members of Oh6. Most are enrolled in—or have graduated from—the Fine Arts program at the University of Texas, Dallas. Members include Elizabeth Alavi, Jerry Comandante, Shelby Cunningham, Tricia Elliott, Amy Halko, Sara Ishii, Adam Kobetich, Kirsten Macy, John Ryan Moore, Polly Perez, Aqsa Shakil, Erica Stephens, Raychael Stine, Tim Stokes, Kevin Todora and Amber Wigant.
Despite “membership,” Oh6 is a generous and porous formation, open to showing the work of outside artists. Working in an array of different media, the line uniting the group is the catalytic joke. Yet it is no happenstance of training or geography that the artists of Oh6 treat irony as the ballistic force of cultural warfare. Their playful game of detachment is born in the fiber of youth—filaments most tightly strung and carefully laid bare in Mission Control.
Tim Stokes, BUYMORENOW, 2005
Mixed media with steel and lights
77 x 96 inches
Photo: Kevin Todora
Curated by artist/member John Ryan Moore, Mission Control was the group’s most poignant and clever exhibition to date. Its success was twofold. First, thanks to Angstrom Gallery, the show hung for several weeks rather than a mere twenty-four hours. Second—and even more importantly—the body of work was more cohesive than past exhibitions. However, contiguity arose more from heterogeneity and conceptual fusion than mere appearance. The intellectual thrust behind the show was technology; specifically, the way in which video games have cultivated a generation equipped with a wholly new type of hand-eye coordination. Oh6 seems keen on the upswell of cyborgian ontology, knowing well that what Baby Boomers see as passing childish fancy is, more precisely, evolution in action. Mission Control presented a wide spectrum of technological confrontation, from Moore’s small inkjet drip painting STS-107 (Main Vehicle Body Break-Up) (2004) and Titus O’Brien’s unfurled, inky transformer Giant Robot (2004) to Tim Stokes’ architectonic signage BUYMORENOW (2005) and the arachnid of Sara Ishii’s Glisten (2004). Each work carries the consistent message of techno-morphing. The relationship between technology and the body is reciprocal. It exists externally, providing new means of perception while forever transforming our ability to see and feel the world around us.
The key to the group and the show’s success is not so much staying power but productivity and pace, which, by default, both bring longevity. Let’s hope Oh6 can keep up their rapid-fire velocity. Let them continue to sprinkle and spray scattershot forms across the city, every salvo bringing oxygenic life to the local cultural body rather than stripping it away.