BigBots: Matt Barton & Jacob Ciocci

Extreme Animals: The Video Game

This project is a play on the pop-culture animatronic automata of the 80’s. There are numerous anthropomorphisized taxidermy animals in a clubhouse playing video games. The viewer looks in to find themselves confronted by a disinterested gang of video game addicts that turn to see who is there but then simply turn back to viewing the TV monitor. The character playing the game mumbles and reacts to the video game.

Matt Barton

Matt Barton grew up in the bible belt of southern Indiana. In high school he worked as a performer at Chuck E. Cheese. He danced in a rat suit while a mechanical animal band performed hit songs, such as, “Walkin' on Sunshine”. Matt graduated from Montana State University with a Bachelor's of Fine Art and a Bachelor's in Art Education. During his undergraduate studies he spent a year in Italy studying sculpture under two Italian artists and traveled extensively throughout Europe visiting museums. He also completed his student teaching semester in New Zealand. Matt completed a Master’s of Fine Art degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA in 2006.

http://www.matthewryanbarton.com/portfolio.html

Jacob Ciocci

Jacob Ciocci is a founding member of the Paper Rad art collective. An influential component in an east coast DIY subculture of noise musicians, performance artists, zine-makers, and cartoonists, Paper Rad's videos, comic books, drawings, paintings, music and mixed-media installations take their inspiration from both contemporary and previous eras of popular culture, synthesizing material from television, video games, comics and the internet. These works use the shared language of popular culture as a vehicle to travel into unknown, mysterious places.

Paper Rad do projects in the gallery but also choose to disseminate their work through various other outlets such as via their website, through constant touring of the US and Europe, through self-published and mass-produced DVD's and comics, and through word of mouth.

Their work has been shown at the Moma (Automatic Update, 2007), the New Museum, (ArtBase 101, Paper Rad & Matt Barton, 2005), The ArtReview 25 at Phillips de Pury, New York (2005), The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (2003), Tate Britain, London (2003); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003) and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2003).

Paper Rad have received critical acclaim in a range of publications, including: The New York Times; ArtReview; Artforum; Art in America; Rolling Stone; Mute; Vice; Issue; and Select. Publications include “Internet Art” (Thames and Hudson, 2004), and 2 artist’s books designed by Paper Rad: "BJ and da Dogz" and "Cartoon Workshop/Pig-Tales" (Picture Box Inc).