By Chris Cunningham
The Scene staff
New York City artist Eto Otitigbe invites people to challenge their brains and see things differently with his exhibit, “Curious Industry.”
It’s on display in The Gallery of Contemporary Art on the Forest Park campus through Nov. 1.
The multi-media exhibit is a collection Otitigbe has been working on in the past few years.
“I was interested in seeing if there was anything that could come out of grouping the work,” he said.
An interactive piece called “Revolutionary Circle 2” requires the viewer to stand in the center while a video camera and a target-practice poster spin around him. The resulting image is projected on the wall.
“The viewer can become a participant,” Otitigbe said.
Another piece, called “Cold in the Sun,” consists of a video with Otitigbe repeating phrases his father repeated while suffering from dementia. Otitigbe transforms into geometric shapes to represent his father’s worsening condition.
Otitigbe, 35, often works in mixed media, which he finds freeing. He can use audio and video, along with more traditional mediums.
“I don’t have to make a decision with installations,” he said. “I can do whatever I want.”
Jamie Kreher, Forest Park photography program coordinator and instructor, encourages students to view the exhibit.
“It’s good to see things that aren’t cut-and-dried, and that require connecting the dots,” she said.
The gallery hosted an opening reception for Otitigbe on Oct. 11. He and his friend, Zuko Hammond, did performance art. They played a video while Zuko read poetry and Otitigbe cut up Styrofoam that looked like pieces of meat then climbed into a plastic bag.
Hammond has known Otitigbe since the ninth grade, when they attended Albany High School in New York.
Hammond often DJs at Otitigbe’s performances.
“(Otitigbe) challenges me to not do the cliché,” Hammond said, describing his friend’s approach to art as “left of center.”
“He’s giving you something you only hear in the room off to the side. He’s been a taste-maker since ‘95.”
Otitigbe lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has done residencies all over the world, including South Africa, Dubai and England. He has worked as a portrait painter, print maker and theatrical scenery designer.
Otitigbe earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 and Stanford University in 2003. He minored in art at MIT and decided to make it a career.
“I thought, ‘Life is short, so why not do what you love?’” he said.
Otitigbe’s engineering experience influenced his decision to work in mixed media.
“We deal with objects in a different way than paintings,” he said.
Otitigbe has been an artist-in-residence at the Luminary Center for the Arts on Cherokee Street in St. Louis. That’s how he met Matthew Issacson, another artist-in-residence who serves as coordinator of The Gallery of Contemporary Art.
Next month, San Francisco painter Ryan Pierce will bring his exhibit “Our Dreams after Sleeping for a Thousand Years” to the gallery.
It’s located off the Forest Park library on the ground level. Hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays or by appointment. For more information, call Issacson at 314-644-9018 or visit etosoro.com.