MOOD is Beth Heinly’s first solo exhibition at Vox Populi. The exhibit centers around the concept of art making within an Internet Age. MOOD is an art installation that is a flow of cataloged images. The term MOOD is internet slang that defines an individual’s ever-changing emotional state online. For this exhibition, MOOD is an indication of the artist’s own influx state of artmaking. MOOD is meant to emphasize a moment. The primary gesture in internet artmaking that MOOD aims to encompass is cataloging. The artist catalogs data to recreate imagery using varying forms of art-making for the installation. The cataloging is based on the artist’s personal interests, which include; craft, feminism, gender, realizations of self, true crime, TV prop replicas and time. The artwork on display utilizes a Conceptual Artists’ practice similar to Famous Conceptual Artists like; John Baldessari, Yoko Ono and Mike Kelley (to name a few), where an artist is not defined by one medium, but by ideas expressed through multimedia. MOOD also calls to the practice of performance art and the cross sections of this practice in all forms of art making including Internet Art.
Though a great number of art objects within the installation are sourced from the internet #notallobjects in MOOD are sourced directly through internet surfing. Additional sources of inspiration are found in works of fiction and iconic imagery from before the Internet. The artist relinquishes any responsibility as to the cataloging making any sense in terms of a linear narrative for an audience, quoted saying “I do what I want.”. The artist chooses not to quote Derrida (the only form of Derrida the artist has read) at you in relation to the deconstruction of the postmodern narrative and their exhibition. MOOD could be coined a Post Internet Art show, but then again there’s one sculpture in the show made distinctly in vein of Post Internet Art, so that’s confusing. The artist would say it is not Post Internet Art.
Beth Heinly is one of the most prolific and diverse content producers in Philadelphia. On any given day you can find her organizing an unsanctioned performance art festival, hosting a Buffy The Vampire Slayer themed discussion group, curating group art shows, archiving Philadelphia’s zine history, cosplaying to the max, or just camping with extreme style. She is the author of several comics and texts that range from the flamboyantly funny to the sickeningly sincere, from the horrific to the horny, from the existential to the cat related. In all that Beth does she is a master and chameleon of genres as she exposes (and celebrates) the ooey gooey crevices of our media saturated psychology. She is currently a member of the collective-run gallery Vox Populi. You can view more of her work at domesticwildcatrefuge.com, Instagram @berthheiny & tumblr at the3oclockbook.tumblr.com, cosplaynhoes.tumblr.com, ocgopf.tumblr.com.
