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Updated: February 10, 2012
Tony Wynn's PATRIOTICA
making up for a lack of imagination (2006)
UGLY AMERICAN TOUR / BERLIN
acrylic collage on canvas unstretched
50x50 inches
paul the postal worker (2000)
acrylic on stretched canvas
12x12 inches
PATRIOTICA
BY TONY WYNN
After all the years of afternoons imploring at the mouth of the subway
Shrill warnings with leaflets and flyers outside the mall
there is no one here that I remember and know, after all.
In the lighted land of millions I bow low and I crawl
It is Heaven (I know) so I heard.
But not like the heaven I had in my dreams.
Not like the heaven from the Bible School campfire summer stories
spoken by Sister Mable Wynn in rapturous wonder,
not like those even...no.
Not like the promised land I imagined, mine just the mind of man
The last thing I remember is being a casualty in the war on HOPE
My famous last words were I am still a believer
But no one heard cause my voice was gone -
From all the screaming and defending. Always, always defending. Asking
where is God? Who took my halo? Has anyone seen my halo?
And who are these Accusing Angels cueing, then surrounding,
watching, circling, pointing at me.
These American Angels in this redwhiteandblue section of this American Heaven.
Building a fence against the Mexican Heaven. For an eternity.
How did I get here…Oh my/where is God?
Wrapped in the flag I go manic street preaching among the stars, hope bashing,
Searching for haters to form a party.
I go making promises I can’t keep just for spare change.
Behind a curtain I overhear a recounting on the 3rd stage over
Some girl says she’d been waiting for/at the gates of pre pearly political purgatory
punctually and professionally with her campaign button
from a line clear ‘cross the corner she’d been listening, listening and waiting,
fruitlessly hoping is against the law now -
And when her name was called she said it was thrilling,
That it was like my Miss America moment she sighed.
And I thought it was almost like that with me too except I wanted to live to see 2012.
That I wanted my everyday breathing life in my constant cognizance and to keep my living Heaven.
Keep my Love American Dream…
Which was a mix of fund raising promises and first lady fantasies
That I call my Patriotica.
(just so everyone is clear).
Miss Puerto Rico
oil & acrylic mixed media collage
on stretched canvas
26x28 inches
First Lady Fantasy
mixed media collage with acrylic on stretched canvas
60 x 48 inches framed
detail
Half Smile From the Countessa
mixed media collage with oil
3 x 36 x 15 stretched canvas museum wrap
THE FUNRAISER
mixed media collage with acrylic
50x50 inches stretched canvas
Untitled Trilogy
mixed media collage with acrylic
on canvas
(3) 16x20
Old Gloria looking good after having a hard year
mixed media collage with acrylic
on stretched canvas
12x12 inches
ONE NIGHT ONLY
Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012
1 NE 40th Street #5 @ n. MIAMI AVE.
MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT
PATRIOTICA
mixed media collage with acrylic on unstretched canvas
30 x 78 inches
FIRST LADY FANTASY
TEASE
mixed media collage with acrylic
on unstretched canvas
28x70 inches
detail
MY MISS AMERICA MOMENT
mixed media collage with acrylic
on unstretched canvas
42 x 48 inches
CITIZENSHIP PROJECTS
artist remembers a story about guards in front of a classroom
acrylic collage on aquarelle
23x29 matted & framed
THE ACCIDENTAL PATRIOT
UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU
mixed media collage with acrylic
on stretched linen
56X40x3 inches
American Foreign Policy
mixed media collage with acrylic
on canvas board
5x7 inches
The Problem of Innocent Suffering 2012
mixed media collage with acrylic
on stretched canvas
26x34x2 inches
along for the ride DIPTYCH
mixed media collage with acrylic
on stretched canvas
(2) 36x36 inches
detail
4th of July in the Warm Years
mixed media collage with acrylic
on stretched canvas
16x20 inches
untitled
mixed media collage with acrylic
on canvas board
8x10 inches
campaign headquarters
mixed media collage with acrylic
on stretched canvas
8x10 inches
Citizenship Review Board
mixed media collage with acrylic
20 x 24 inches stretched canvas
The Patriots
acrylic collage on aquarelle
23x29 matted & framed
2012 jig
mixed media collage with acrylic on canvas
72 x 50 inches
conflict with interest
acrylic on stretched canvas
16x20 inches
the protean man (2012)
acrylic on stretched canvas
22x28 inches
Accidental Patriot
acrylic collage on stretched canvas
36x48 inches
Proclamation
acrylic collage on canvas board
16x20 inches
SUPERPAC
acrylic collage on stretched canvas
16x20 inches
SOME COLLECTORS OF THIS CATALOG
detail
detail
Patriotica: Preservation of Hope
“…And I thought it was almost like that with me too except I wanted to live to see 2012.
That I wanted my everyday breathing life in my constant cognizance and to keep my living Heaven. Keep my Love American Dream…Which was a mix of fund raising promises and first lady fantasies . That I call my Patriotica….”
Tony Wynn’s latest exhibition features a vision of “first lady fantasies and fundraising promises,” a show that pays homage and support to the “land of millions.” These series identify an “American Heaven”, a promise land that derives from mind of the man, or rather the man of the mind. This is the man of Hope with his Heaven of Red, White, and Blue and his Patriotica.
Patriotica is a controlled intervention of what the citizen ultimately stands for, particularly with the nearing of the 2012 election. It is a prologue to the fate of a country and a verbal and visual representation of the country’s convergence. It is the face of union depicted through iconic subject matter and color themes.
This exhibition is a cultivation and continuation to prior showcases – Citizenship Projects, first launched in an exhibition in Helsinki in 2001 and Ugly Tour, in Berlin 2006. With the upcoming Art Basel and nearing election, Patriotica seeks to synergize the art world and the political realm in order to establish a more active and substantial relationship between art fantasy and political reality.
The themes of American life are expressed through the perspective of a citizen, a man or woman within the system gathering and bestowing his or her intuition and spirit into a series of images that filter concepts of America and its preconceptual notions.
Patriotica ultimately addresses a fostered nature of “American Heaven” all the while withholding an ambiguity, allowing the viewer to formulate his or her own insight on Patriotica’s story. As undecipherable as it is, this collection of images evidently parallels artist Tony Wynn’s narrative poems, framing a system similar to our nation’s own. Each image, filled with its own rendition of American spirit, studies moments of victory, exhaustion, and confusion as well as indiscernible icons whose subject matters breathe allegiance and attachment for its country and it’s Patriotica.”
Kimberly Susana Colomer
