JOHNODONNELLprojects
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A$$ HOLE
2019
Blue House Arts
Dayton, OH
A$$ HOLE is an installation that was made for the exhibition MONEY PALACE. It featured four artists exploring the idea of the Dollar Store as a medium to itself. The ideas behind each artists’ work search through the humor and oddities of this strange American institution. All of the materials for this installation were purchased at dollar stores.
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Yard Dreams
2019
Flowerbox Projects
Miami, FL
The exhibition Yard Dreams is designed to resemble a toy store. Over 80 different toy assemblages and resin casts are on display. All of the toys are editioned and made with plastic animals and super glue. Aesop’s Fables and other representations of animal hybrids in cartoons inspire this work. The products are sealed in commercially produced bubbles and attached to cardboard decorated with spray-paint and stencils.
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Turtles All the Way Up
2019
New Bedford Museum of Art
New Bedford, MA
This show is a series of sculptures that reference an American interpretation of Eastern sensibilities. Playing with toys, I interpret Buddhism and Hinduism for my own artistic advances. I use assemblages of toys, manufactured in China to critique the American inclination to exploit Eastern philosophy to guide ego-driven pursuits.
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/entertainmentlife/20190214/turtles-all-way-up-comes-out-of-its-shell
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DIY-VR
2018
The Wassaci Project
Wassaic, NY
DIY-VR is an installation that aims to create an experience of an artificial environment that reveals new information as it is navigated. This piece responds to the unique architecture of the Maxon Mills in a way that references constructed ruins, simultaneously suggest decay and creation. This installation is guided by principles of one exaggerated and constructed "reality" transitioning to another "reality". The images spray painted on cardboard are intentional organically pixelated. Pixels as decoration rather than information. This installation is inspired by the aesthetics of haunted houses, legos and Minecraft.
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Ghost of a Wall
2017
Hans Weiss Newspace Gallery
Manchester, CT
This installation is one that was transformed through a performance. The beginning of the performance the structure is all "bricks." Through performative actions I transform the space. At the end it is a a hopeful scene of clouds and white picket fences.
This installation is inspired by the aesthetics of haunted houses, legos and Minecraft.
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PINEAPPLE PORTAL
2017
Hygienic Gallery
New London, CT
This installation is inspired by the aesthetics of haunted houses, legos and Minecraft.
Pineapple Portal is a metaphor for how ideas travel, how supply and demand functions with in a capitalist system, gentrification, how America sets global trends and the colonization of language.
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Prints That Work: Printmaking in the Service of a bigger picture
2017
Housatonic Museum of Art
Bridgeport, CT
curated by Leslie Giuliani
“This exhibition features four artists who make prints as a way to amplify their personal vision. To communicate their perspective properly, they have invented new techniques that push the boundaries of traditional printmaking from a two-dimensional plane into immersive installation environments incorporating video, found objects, and the like. Reinventing print-making is a vital part of their practice.” - Leslie Giuliani
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winners are losers
2016
Ely Contemporary of Contemporary Art
New Haven, CT
This exhibition aims to look at what "winning" and "losing" means. I use the entertainment establishment Dave & Busters as a lens to understand winner and losers. Dave & Busters identifies as "Family-friendly chain offering a sports-bar-style setting for American food & arcade games." I win items from Dave & Busters to understand my position in the economy, the job market and my relationship with my own ego. What do we want? How do we get it? What does it mean when we don't get what we want.
Press: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/are_winners_losers/
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State Fair of Texas
2016
Ely Contemporary of Contemporary Art
New Haven, CT
For the last several years I have visited the State Fair of Texas in Dallas. It is the largest state fair in the country. I like the event because it is an extreme exaggeration of American culture. These type of experiences feel very American, and I enjoy these experiences, they help me understand who I am, where I live and what can expect from my fellow Americans.
This year I won a "State Fair of Texas" electric guitar. I actually had to cheat, reaching way over the booth and placing the ring on a bottle while the carnival game operator wasn't looking.
I had to work hard to play an impossible game, then I had to cheat to win the game, and I won a cheap electric guitar made in China and stamped with the State Fair of Texas's logo. I believe this to be a very American experience.
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Pizza Temple
2015
No Pop Gallery
New Haven, CT
Pizza Temple is an installation inspired by parodies of Mayan temples: the Nickelodeon game show from the 90’s “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” The installation consists of fake masonry and empty pizza boxes that resemble a portal. The portal contains an LED lamp that oscillates between a dozen different colors. This is the only light sources for the installation. This is a reference to the consequences of the absence or presence of pizza in popular culture.
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Psychedelic Pantry
2014
New Britain Museum of American Art
New Britain, CT
Psychedelic Pantry, a new media installation, points to moments of everyday life while highlighting the bizarre and mysterious moments we often overlook while shuffling to the toaster or coffee maker in the morning.
Appearing as a simple representation of a kitchen area or pantry, further inspection reveals there is more happening than food storage. Psychedelic Pantry is an installation that reveals moments of constructed metaphysical awareness to reveal hallucinatory or surreal sensation, playing on ideas of peripheral vision and imagined movement.
PRESS
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Cerreality
2014
The Blue House,
Dayton, OH
Cerreality, is an installation that responds to the unique domestic context of the Blue House Gallery. Inspired by the history of surrealism and Dada, both these art movements used common items to create strange figurations and illogical relationships, John O’Donnell uses breakfast cereal to create structures and spaces that engage the viewer through means of texture, taste, smell and nostalgia.
PRESS
http://www.daytoncitypaper.com/got-milk/
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Surreal Picnic
2014
Park(ing) Day,
Greater Hartford Art Council,
Hartford, CT
Surreal Picnic is an outdoor installation for PARK(ing) Day, an annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places.
The installation is comprised of a few different elements: a deformed picnic table, rock formations made out of breakfast cereal and a small arch that is made of "Cheese Puffs". Surreal Picnic embraces items generally found at a picnic but uses mirrors and unlikely materials to allow the viewers to see these objects or food items in an odd and novel way.
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STILLLIFE
2014
The Schumacher Gallery
Westover School
Middlebury, CT
curated by Caleb Portfolio
STILLLIFE is a title that refers to the category of painting and also a calm reflection on life and time. John O'Donnell's process and materials are inspired by the history of painting and contemporary abstraction. In the studio he paints directly on to found objects and then paints the image on a burlap canvas with gesso and acrylic paint, sometimes he uses oil paint and spray paint to reference different historical and contemporary processes. The result is a casual, but considered, painting loosely depicting an object through gesture and liberal application paint- often directly out of the tube. Most paintings and objects are loosely related, but certain pieces directly reference moments from art history.
PRESS
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2014/04/images-john-odonnell-considers-mimesis.html
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Navel Gazing
2012
Quinebaug Valley Community College
Danielson, CT
curated by Audrey Mucci
Navel Gazing appropriates and reassembles nostalgic objects and icons from my youth and present to address the vexing obligations of contemporary existence and illuminate the tension between childhood expectations and adult realities. Looking at an intersection of pop culture and traditional American symbolism.
Installation includes videos, collages, sculpture, drawings and prints.
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Monkey Shines
2010
Seton Gallery,
University of New Haven
West Haven, CT
curated by L. Jessica Peck
Monkey Shines is an installation that uses popular imagery to references the awkward maturation process shared by those culturally educated popular media. Adolescent high jinks, hypothetical conundrums and practical jokes take form in rough-hewn assemblages, indications of temporary solutions and failed ambitions.
A majority of materials are purchased from party stores to address topics of celebration and the disposable nature of objects that facilitate special occasions.
Installation includes videos, collages, sculpture, drawings and prints.
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Salad Days
2009
Flux Space
Philadelphia, PA
curated by Nike Desis
Salad Days is a site-specific Installage (installation + collage) that celebrates the inexperience, indiscretion and charming ignorance of an idealized youth, while scolding puberty for the complications it has wrought. Salad Days evokes the vague period before childhood ends and the maturation process begins, a place where sexual thoughts and assumptions are misunderstood and result in indistinct notions of yourself and others.
A majority of materials are purchased from party stores to address topics of celebration and the disposable nature of objects that facilitate special occasions. This is another way of examining the temporality of youth and the awkward reality of transitions.
PRESS
http://www.theartblog.org/2009/06/salad-days-and-tnppssf-at-flux/
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PG-13
2010
Artspace,
New Haven, CT
curated by Liza Stanton
PG-13 is an installation that appropriates various forms of popular media, plastic toys from the dollar store, publicity photos, glossy pictures of food, bad air-brushed pornography, and a cardboard cut-out of the ultimate masculine role model: Michael Jordan. PG-13 implies a culture over-crowded with material excess, popular icons, and kitsch. Installation includes videos, collages, sculpture, drawings and prints.
This installation relies on Surrealist troupes and Dada philosophy as a way of making sense of a society bent on irony, deception and illusion. The exhibition is hung salon style, floor to ceiling, to draw parallels of art history and contemporary media.
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Eden
2009
Visual Arts Resource Center
Open Studios
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT
An installation inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. Several surveillance cameras are placed through out the installation referencing observation and comfort as it relates to morality and self-consciousness.