The Basement Gallery
: : B L A N K   I N S I D E : :

        "Blank Inside"          
         New works by John Bissonette
         December 7th 2007 - January 4th 2008

john bissonette

Blank Inside is an exhibition of new work by artist John Bissonette.  Crafted using a combination of inkjet printing and painting on canvas, the works in this show homage to the glossy surfaces and programmatic language of common greeting cards.  Bissonette’s work conflates notions of high and low by combining the techniques of lowbrow fine art reproduction, overtly sentimental imagery, and materially driven painting.  The material and imagery present in the show put to question value and taste while posing questions of authenticity and the construction of meaning.

Artist Statement

“Thinking of you.”

        It is a simple statement but one that has implications far beyond its apparent brevity.  An intimation of empathy, sympathy, love, and loss, it transcends
specificity and is applicable to both the beautiful and disastrous. It is a general acknowledgement of an awareness that is applicable to everyone and everything. 

        I am interested in the activity of authorship as a matter of customization.  The greeting card is appealing to me because of its open-ended meaning. 
It is a vessel waiting to be emptied, refilled, and is there for erepresentative of the activity of meaning.

        My work is an exploration of situations that have the ability to transgress the notion of cliché.  I work within the constraints of mass culture,
yet recode appropriated images and text so as to allow for meaning to be born of the slippery spaces between the genuine and the prescribed.     

graphic