Michael Lasater. Kansas City Artists Coalition, Kansas City, MO. Solo exhibition, December 13, 2013 – January 14, 2014.
South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, IN. Solo exhibition, March 10 - July 8, 2012.
Ready, Set (2012)
Single-channel HD video, stereo.
Digitized archive photo, synthesized and sampled sound, animation.
Sometime in the mid 60s, my mother took a Kodak snapshot of my uncle and father standing in a parking lot at the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, Kansas. Their poses — my uncle stiff-armed in profile, my father a bit more relaxed, hand in pocket — called to mind David Hockney’s subjects in his painting American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman), and for that reason I remembered it and eventually took it up as a motif for composition. For me, Ready, Set is somewhat formalistic, a time-object referencing cubism and counterpoint as well as the thematic ideas of ritual and return.