Rubbish Re-Animator

It is not a poltergeist that haunts the Southwestern College Art Gallery, but the art of Joe Yorty. His work aims to channel the spirit of consumerism through the medium of found objects assembled in strange ways.

Yorty’s work, displayed under the name “The Ghost I Love the Most,” is a reference to the article “The Etymology of a Ghost” by Angella D’Avignon, in which she analyses how music changes hands over time, evolving over the years as the song is passed along. Despite shifts in lyrics and context, the spirit of the original song remains. Yorty seeks to unlock this same spirit from the objects he utilizes in his artwork.

Yorty received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art at the University of California, San Diego in 2013. His influences include both 20th century artist Marcel Duchamp and contemporary artist Haim Steinbach, a Professor Emeritus and artist at UCSD whom Yorty studied under.

Duchamp revolutionized the art world when he unveiled “Fountain” in 1917 and popularized readymade art with a urinal signed R. Mutt. At the time, presenting a found object as art was unheard of and unthinkable. It was only displayed (but hidden from the main show) because Duchamp could not be refused as board member of the Society of Independent Artists. Although few were willing to call it art at first, it is now widely recognized as one of the most influential pieces of of the 20th century and the forerunner of conceptual art.

Readymades coincided with the creation of assemblage art, which much of Yorty’s work can be classified.

Steinbach’s artwork makes use of found objects, but where Duchamp made use of bottle racks and bicycle wheels, Steinbach creates shelves of composite material to display objects like basketball shoes, lamps, boxes of cereal, toys and other items produced by a mass-produced civilization. Yorty said Steinbach’s work is not so much a critique of anything, but a formal analysis of color, shape and texture through the grouping of items presented on custom-made shelves crafted from a wide variety of materials.

Yorty’s pieces combine elements from Steinbach and Duchamp, but his work is not an imitation of either. Yorty said he wants his work to be political and to make people think by recycling contemporary artifacts.

“I don’t want to make anything new,” he said. “We should re-contextualize what already exists.”

Yorty’s artwork makes heavy use of discarded items from second-hand stores, estate sales or simply found in the trash (such as the several collages made from discarded carpet). What others no longer want or need, he collects in an art studio.

These objects may not hold much monetary value, but Yorty’s is able to tap into a forgotten level sentimentality or emotional energy that the items still hold.

He can take different objects and spin their meaning around, like looking at action figures in a different light.

“A lot of what I use has some ties to classical sculpture,” said Yorty. “I like using figures, like this Star Wars character. They have the same kind as idealized masculinity.”

“Warm Shelf,” “we chunky dunk,” and “Arrangement with Slash” are each a collection of seemingly random objects arranged on a shelf. They range from action figures, various holiday decorations, spent Amazon gift cards, plastic flowers and dozens of items that could be found at any garage sale, thrift store or left to gather dust in one’s own attic or basement. Knick-knacks of all sorts spill off of the shelves and onto the floors, climb up the walls and occupy an awkward amount of space

Individually, each object holds little meaning, but together they create a bizarre shrine to consumerism that gets stranger the longer one looks at it.

Consumerism is a social and economic mind set that came from the overproduction of the industrial revolution as a way to get people, or consumers, to continue to buy stuff.dddiers, many of whom Yorty said he identified with as fellow blue-collar workers.

But Yorty said the armed forces are not a subject matter he intends to explore with his art, except perhaps as a side effect to critiquing consumerism (such as toy guns, soldiers or military paraphernalia sometimes appearing in his assemblages).

A tower of VHS tapes about six feet high entitled “Carving (for Eleanor)” resembles that of a block of marble. This monolith made of hundreds of workout tapes bearing titles like “Total Sculpt Plus Abs,” “Buns of Steel,” “Bellyshapers,” and “Walk Away the Pounds,” combines to capture a cultural phenomenon of obsessive athleticism.

This piece stands like a monument to the thousands of people who have been trained by society to hate their bodies, to sculpt themselves into a more perfect form. It is easy to imagine a muscular sculpted form hidden within, the collective wish of a generation of fitness freaks for a perfect body.

“Friday Black Friday” is a set of five monitors each looping footage of the ceilings of big box stores filmed during Black Friday. “I was interested in the geometry of it, the roofs of the stores [were calm] while there was so much chaos around me.”

Each monitor depicts the ceiling of a different store, but they each share with them a sterile metal environment made of pipes, sheets of steel and evoke a sense of loneliness and isolation, as if the videos were taken from the moon or a satellite.

In a small dark side room of the Art Gallery lit only by a projection and a flicker-flame bulb from the piece “Black Lamp,” a sculpture made from multiple lamps stacked on top of each other and coated in rubber. It appeared like a dark totem of an unknown cult, topped with a bulb whose light was dimmer than a candle.