by Anisa Salazar
Senior Editor
John Sparagana’s “Interference Patterns” exhibition is currently on display at the Benton Museum of Art in Claremont.
This is Sparagana’s first survey exhibition that highlights his unique techniques of collaging, where his medium incorporates material from magazines, comic books, news images and his previous exhibition catalogues.
Sparagana’s motive to work with media images is to change the way they are seen. From something informational to now a poetic or critical mode, his goal is to incorporate images in the media as an author instead of a consumer, he said in an interview in 2011 for Arts + Culture Magazine.
This survey exhibition is a loose timeline of Sparagana’s work beginning in the early 2000s. The first series on display, “I Wait for You Every Night,” was prompted by the events on Sept. 11, 2001. Displayed are photographed magazine covers with projected shadows, obscuring the catalogs themselves.
Much of the artwork depicts political acts and movements, as well as comic book images of white masculinity in the United States. Yet, Sparagana never advocates for a specific political position. His goal in creating this art is to view the images in a different light, separate from their ideological homes.
“I think a really important thing for John is taking these pre-existing images and separating them from their ideological homes so that space is really important for him,” visitor services manager Nilofar Naraghi said. “It’s something that is usually uncomfortable, but being okay with that discomfort and sticking with it allows you to think about these people or situations differently.”
The “Between the Eyes” series in 2008 marked a turning point in Sparagana’s work, where he began to include a wide range of source material into one piece of art. “The Revolutionaries/Kazimir Malevich, ‘Hieratic Suprematist Cross,’ 1918/Malevich, ‘Black Square and Red Square,’ 1915” is a piece that includes three different pieces of source material put together to create one.
Visitor Michael Butler enjoyed this piece because he studied Russian and was able to identify Malevich’s work.
“It was revolutionary art trying to say something about authoritarian space, and now he’s using it in this contemporary stuff,” Butler said.
Butler connects this message to some of the last pieces of art shown in the exhibition from the “Crowds & Power” series in 2013. In reflection, he asked himself, “Are they protesting for a good cause or a bad cause, or does it matter?”
“(Sparagana) is trying to say the crowd, and the anger of the crowd, how we understand it, sympathize, or react against it, depends completely on context,” Butler said. “Then, he is deliberately blurring the context so that you are forced to think about if it’s a good or bad thing.”
The remixing techniques that Sparagana has utilized make his work distinct and unique to him.
“I always enjoy the artists that have done this work, and not just this work, but it’s all just so interesting to me,” visitor Katherine Rubel said. “Above whatever else I’ve learned about art, and did in art, this is so different.”
The series “Rupture and Void,” 2005-06, stood out to visitor Marlene Munguia. Two of the pieces are mostly white with holes revealing an image beneath the surface, while the others are pictures with a black void disrupting the images.
Munguia thought the handmade nature of all the work was interesting.
“Each textile is cut and placed a certain way, even little pieces are missing, which was done intentionally,” Munguia said.
She describes “Themesong Variation #6,” which, when looked at closely, you can see each individual pixel, with some having fallen off and not been replaced. This alludes to his techniques of slicing, mixing and gluing while allowing the unpredictable to show through the art.
The exhibit is free to visit from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday until June 28 at the Benton Museum of Art.
Anisa Salazar can be reached at anisa.salazar@laverne.edu.
Anisa Salazar is a senior communications major with a concentration in public relations. She is sports editor, social media editor and a staff photographer for the Campus Times. She previously served as a staff writer.
Joseph Nocero is a senior photography major at the University of La Verne and a staff photographer for the Campus Times and photography editor for La Verne Magazine. His work can also be found at Joseph Nocero Photography.
