{"id":5903,"date":"2018-02-15T07:07:02","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T12:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=5903"},"modified":"2018-02-15T07:07:02","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T12:07:02","slug":"john-preus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/02\/15\/john-preus\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Beast\u2019 At Montserrat Is A Giant Bull To Go Inside And Try To \u2018Cross Political Divides\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, John Preus was busy putting the finishing touches on \u201cThe Beast,\u201d his giant sculpture of a bull that divides the gallery at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, in half. He had cobbled it together from three old boats donated by the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. The recycled hulls with their weathered paint, he says, give a \u201cpathos to it. It has a social resonance along with being just a bunch of junk.\u201d Now the sound of his nail gun cracked through the gallery as he erected an arch of 2x4s behind the bull fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all for the Chicago artist\u2019s exhibition \u201cThe Beast: Herd Mentality\u201d<\/a> at Montserrat, which opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. tonight and continues through March 30. The sculpture, the school says, is meant to \u201cserve as a community art space and a multidisciplinary platform for cultural activities. This temporary sculpture\/performance pavilion will be a site for a wide range of cultural programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Preus assembles “The Beast” at Montserrat, Feb. 14, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAll my work is some ways is about the relationship between individuals and group activity, herd mentality,\u201d Preus tells me. \u201cEthics is the space between animal and humanity that is beyond animal, consciousness. I think of this space as having a sculpture in the more traditional sense from the outside. But it\u2019s also digesting us on this side. It\u2019s sort of taking us in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bull is a reference to the (bull) market. But also to the Minotaur. I think too of a Trojan horse (or Trojan bull) with people secreted inside. \u201cThere are a lot of reference points,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the animals that show up in our earliest representations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activism by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"John<\/a>
John Preus’s “The Beast” at Montserrat, Feb. 14, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Life jackets adorn the walls. Sails have been recycled as covers for lamps. Metal hardware from the vessels has been turned into jewelry. The bow of one boat has become a swing you can sit in. A ladder allows you to climb up to a platform and poke your head out of the Beast. Preus says, \u201cThis is for rants, sermons, pronouncements that you can make to people outside the Beast or inside the Beast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can do whatever you want in it,\u201d Preus explains. Montserrat has scheduled a workshop to plan a dance; seminars on the intersection of art, philosophy and class; a writing workshop; a conversation with poets; and a student production of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cThe Tragedy of Julius Caesar.\u201d Video monitors inside the sculpture will screen animations and puppetry by Montserrat students.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Preus inside “The Beast” at Montserrat, Feb. 14, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis will be a recording booth in here. Sort of like StoryCorps,\u201d Preus says pointing to a spot at the far side of the gallery. \u201cThere will be conversations that can be recorded in there. \u2026 We\u2019re framing it in terms of trying to cross political divides or social divides. Talk to somebody you don\u2019t talk to all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Preus’s “The Beast” at Montserrat, Feb. 14, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"John<\/a>
John Preus’s “The Beast” at Montserrat, Feb. 14, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, John Preus was busy putting the finishing touches on \u201cThe Beast,\u201d his giant sculpture of a bull that divides the gallery at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, in half. He had cobbled it together from three old boats donated by the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. The recycled hulls with their weathered paint, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[58,277],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5903"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5921,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5903\/revisions\/5921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}