"When world-famous writer and thinker Stephen Hawking returned to terra firma after enjoying a lifelong dream of being suspended in a zero-gravity environment, he said with absolute charm that he "could have gone on and on." But, with bittersweet irony, Hawking's remark was painfully undermined by the image of his frail body confined in a wheelchair and his robotic digitized voice expressionlessly pining for endlessness. Even the video images of his limp body floating in that staged and catered environment project an odd sense of futility, reminding the viewer more about the continuance of hopeless immobility and less about the sense of freedom and fancy for which the trip was intended. Arguably, it's not even a cynical read to see the whole experience as fleeting and sad.
Similarly, Todd Pavlisko's 2007 solo exhibition at moniquemeloche gallery�which is anchored by an incredibly sensitive painting of the Hawking flight�speaks volumes about life's cornucopia of calamity and our undying tendencies to add levity to our existence with aspirational moments of dreaming, chancing, socializing, collecting, drinking, playing, and basically just trying to ignore the inevitable end� ad infinitum. In the gallery, Pavlisko has orchestrated a handful of autonomous works that coalesce into something more of an installation�an overall environment that collectively keeps circling around these sanguine themes of paralyzing hopelessness and the sobering veracity of life's impossibilities....With all hope and no hope colliding ceaselessly throughout the space, Pavlisko imparts his own cycle of repetitive desire with reminders around every corner about the "on and on" grind our own dismal daily existence." text excerpted from essay by Kristin Bly Rogers 2007
Todd Pavlisko (American b. 1974) lives in Chicago and also maintains a studio in NY. He received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and his BFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His major installation Trophy Membership 2005 is in collection of The Progressive Corporation, and he has work in the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (California) in addition to numerous private collections from Chicago to New York to Panama. Recent group shows include I died for Beauty curated by Omar Lopez Chahoud at Newman Popiashvili Gallery NY, Changing Cities: Chicago curated by Paul Klein at Museum of New Art Detroit, The Eclectic Eye: Selections of Fantasy and Illusion from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation at the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, and in Bearable Lightness...Likeness curated by Franklin Sirmans at PS1, NY. Pavlisko is currently teaching the First Year Program in Time Arts at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
