Bauhaus Prairie Art Gallery Proudly Presents

"Face Value: The Portrait and Self-Portrait"

A Group Show Including the Art of Aaron Wilder

July 15-August 11, 2018

Bauhaus Prairie Art Gallery

116 1/2 North Main

Newkirk, OK 74647

Work from Aaron Wilder's "Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream" project is included in the exhibition. This is an installation, digital collage, and video project incorporating sound and the projection of images onto wall-mounted pages from John Bunyan’s 1678 book “Pilgrim’s Progress.” The book is a heavily didactic tale of how to live your life as a Christian. It is used to indoctrinate children into evangelical Christianity. The audio incorporated in this project is recordings of me reading texts from cards and letters sent to me by a religious authority figure throughout my life. Names of characters from Bunyan’s text are applied to images of me as a child in non-chronological order to challenge the linear focus of aging. In doing so, I apply the guise of 75 characters from Bunyan’s book to myself at different points throughout childhood. This project explores the concept of layered authorship. Feelings of nostalgia for a lost childhood are uncomfortably juxtaposed to a rejection of prescribed life trajectories based on religion and morality.