OHT Gallery

OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Ben Sloat

I'm Not Like Other Guys

September 5 - 27, 2008
Reception: Friday, September 5, 5:30-7:30pm

O·H+T Gallery is pleased to open its fall 2008 season with I'm Not Like Other Guys, an exhibition of new work by Ben Sloat.

Ben Sloat uses photographic images to examine cultural iconography. In his earlier work, which includes Offspring (a video loop in which a man slowly morphs from Caucasian to Asian and back again) and a series of digitally generated scrolls reminiscent of Japanese prints, anime, old Hollywood, and religious icons, he achieves this through the use of portraiture. Sloat's mixed race heritage is an influence in these portrait pieces, though he also explores broader themes of identity and transformation.

I'm Not Like Other Guys marks a shift for Sloat, as he focuses on a single individual, Michael Jackson. Much of the work in the exhibition is based on Thriller, Jackson's classic, music video from 1982. The dizzying variety of media used by Sloat (painting, digital print, stained glass, vinyl record covers, video, and view-master reel) mimics the ubiquitous practice of reproducing celebrity images everywhere and on everything, and suggests that our American love affair with pop icons is rivaled only by our intimate relationship with visual communications and communications technology.

Thrill Me, Sloat's stained-glass piece of a still from the Thriller video, depicts Michael dancing in a burst of transcendental light, a setting usually reserved for Christ or the Virgin Mary. The painting Seductive Whiteness (above), a composite of different paintings by the 19th century French Romantic painter William-Adolphe Bougereau, depicts a flower-wreathed Michael Jackson surrounded by doting putti. Just as Thriller documents Michael's transformation from teenager to werewolf, Seductive Whiteness represents Michael's bizarre and tragic, personal transformation from black boy to a white man/woman. In his artist's statement Ben Sloat offers this quote from Keith Haring: "Michael Jackson has denied the finality of God's creation."

Ben Sloat is a Boston artist who has an MFA degree from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and an undergraduate degree in Peace and Conflict Studies at U.C. Berkeley. He teaches at the Art Institute of Boston and has been a lecturer and/or panelist at U.C. Berkeley, RISD, Wellesley College, Harvard University, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Sloat was awarded a 2008 Fulbright Scholars Award to study in Taiwan. He has exhibited his work nationally, and extensively in New York and Boston. This is Ben Sloat's first one-person exhibition at O·H+T Gallery.

Ben Sloat - Seductive Whiteness

Seductive Whiteness, oil and pigment on canvas, 41"x72", 2008

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