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Matthew DeStefano

School of Art, Art, MFA 1

FISH STORIES

A pyramid stands on the banks of the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee. At once an ode to the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, a ⅔ scale replica of the great pyramids of Giza in glass and steel, “The Great American Pyramid” was conceived as an ambitious event complex. It failed and sat vacant for many years, a leaky shell of its mythological form. Until, in 2015, when it reached its destiny as the retail temple Bass Pro Shops, the world’s leader in outdoor recreation supplies and apparel. Inside are the tools of pursuit and capture. Camouflage and mimicry double as they confuse the reality of the store’s live aquarium and alligator swamp, and the still taxidermied trophies that perch above dizzied customers.


The Bass Pro Shop at the Memphis Pyramid inspired my virtual Mid-Res exhibition Fish Stories. In the United States, just as old mythologies are appropriated, new ones form with the merging of capital and religion. Conceived in January 2021 just as the blurring of truth of lies came to a head as a paranoid public stormed the nation’s Capitol building, while members of congress certified the votes of the presidential election. Fish Stories considers the mimicry, lies, and camouflage we inhabit in order to maneuver within enclosures. The project asks: What is the price paid for that maneuverability?  As we orient ourselves within the interstice, where do we place our faith?


In the exhibition, the camouflage patterns of the t-shirts are bound to the substrates of their origin, rising and falling in an attempt to free themselves. But in their desire to do so they are suspended in liminality between the painting and the wall. Not for sale, not even available to be tried on, they are frozen forms in a perpetual resurrection and descension - eternal objects of desire in virtuality. Three pairs of waders are anchored by their weight to the racks on the wall, though their fate is already determined to forever wade like rocks at the bottom of a river. A shining lure with its watchful eye leans against the wall in invitation to be captured, a corner mirror looking back. This exhibition is a simulation of one that may never exist in physical space (as we currently understand it) but it exists before you now, on screen, with its potential to lie or tell the truth. Essentially, it’s a fish story.