Mark Moore Gallery (Los Angeles), which represents the (mostly) Austin-based art collective Okay Mountain, has announced that the collective’s piece “Roadside Attractions” (2012) has been acquired by the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. This is a nice sort of homecoming, since many of Okay Mountain’s members are UT alumni.
The piece was originally commissioned as part of a visiting artist series for the Cress Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. In solid Okay Mountain form, it’s a deadpan sculpture + print edition in the form of a wooden stand full of various travel brochures, just as you might find in a hotel lobby or welcome center, though all the content of the brochures is pastiche, created by the members of Okay Mountain. Per Mark Moore’s announcement: “Through calculated exaggeration and espousal of the absurd, Okay Mountain creates farcical caricatures of a national identity. Faux infomercials, flyers, guidebooks, and memos are rife with satirical imitations of salesmen, tour guides and mascots – playing on our communal tendency for insatiable want.”
Okay Mountain’s work has been acquired by a handful of other national and Texas museums. For a list look toward the bottom of this page. Nice work and congrats to the Blanton and Okay Mountain!