The Miami Herald has a story this morning about a Broward kid who ran into the Secret Service while trying to get to stardom in the art world. Deerfield Beach High graduate Yazmany Arboleda, 27, was picked up by police yesterday after putting the title of his latest exhibit -- The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama -- on the side of an NYC art gallery yesterday morning.
Reporter Kathleen McGrory does a solid job on the story; I'm just wondering why she couldn't have asked Arboleda point-blank how much of this is really about art and how much of it is about marketing (can you say "publicity stunt"). The inflammatory title (or the NYPD and Secret Service's reaction to it) got Yazmany ink in the New York Times , the Daily News, New York Post, and some national attention. Addressing that elephant in the room would have done the story a world of good.
Arboleda, who was let go by authorities after some explaining, seems to be making headway in NYC as an artist. It's hard to say if he's a great artist; but he's definitely bright and resourceful -- and he's real good at that form of artist's double-talk that sounds mysterious and deep but may really be just babble. Here's how Yazmany describes one of his recent exhibits, titled "The New Vitruvians":
"New Vitruvians” is a study of appearance and proportions, and examines the geometry of beauty to reveal new truths about our perceptions of the physical ideals, along with the social and cultural factors that influence them.
And what is this thing that will reveal new truths about our perceptions of the physical ideals? It's thousands of balls on which photographs are painted by a machine connected to a computer. At least that's what I think it is. Hard to tell. You can go to Yazmany's his website to see for yourself (and "to explore, to discover, to enjoy" a "web woven of wonderlust, of musings and misadventures ... a mix of what has been and what may be").
I salute the man. Don't know whether's he's more Warhol or wannabe, but he's got the balls, literally, to push the boundaries -- and he's making some good noise while he's at it.
