R.P.M.
From Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program
Artists: Mollie Rabiner, J.J. Peet and Don Myhre
May 24 – July 4, 2002
Minnesota Artists Gallery
Mollie Rabiner is known for her sense of humor, her ambitious cast and welded sculpture, and an obsession with superstition. The objects or theatrical props she creates for her sculptures and installations often function autobiographically or as surrogates for troublesome or tragic characters.
Rabiner invited the gallery visitors to try their luck playing a claw-and-digger machine filled with an assortment of toylike objects and a repertoire of Rabiner's sculptural “characters” (rabbits' feet with spurs, clocks, gauges) from past work. Was there a chance to win a prize? Rabiner said: “You're gonna want'em bad.” But as everyone knows, it's not whether you win, but how you play the game.
J.J. Peet presented a curious array of fake objects designed to carry extreme value or allude to some secret information or event. He questioned the very nature of art through an assortment of found and handmade props-bags of money, bricks of gold, a working count-down clock, and a briefcase whose combination lock he worked for an entire month until he finally got it open (and yes, it was empty).
Don Myhre is known for beautifully designed and crafted environments and sculpture layered with irony and cultural critique. Unusually well versed in cutting-edge technology, Myhre uses tools that until very recently were found only in the medical or automotive industries. For R.P.M., Mhyre presented a weird robotic amalgamation of real, virtual, and transformed found objects and images. In Raft Myhre combined a fiberglass Jet-ski, a down-loaded landscape cast in foam, a tattered taxidermied rabbit, looping video footage of an unknown outdoor site, and easy-listening sounds from nature. Myhre's implausible and mismanaged product made a clear reference to America's commodification of nature and its potentially deadly confusion between the real and the virtual landscape.
Contents |
Related Works of Art
 Title wall for R.P.M. |
 Installation view |
 Mollie Rabiner, Try Your Luck, 2002 |
 Mollie Rabiner, Try Your Luck, detail, 2002 |
 Mollie Rabiner, Try Your Luck, detail, 2002 |
 Don Myhre, Raft, 2002 |
 Don Myhre, Raft, detail, 2002 |
 Don Myhre, Aphrodite Replica 1, 2002 |
 J.J. Peet, Money Bags (32), 2002 |
 J.J. Peet, Intallation view |
 J.J. Peet, (P2) and Big League Book, 2002 |
Related Materials
 Don Myhre, Scanning Aphrodite image |
Related Events
- Opening Reception: Thursday, May 23, 2002 at 7:00 p.m. in the Minnesota Artists Gallery.
- Artists tour: Thursday, June 27, 2002 at 7:00 p.m. in the Minnesota Artists Gallery.
