Aaron Hauck:
Transmutations of the Stone Age and “I Generation” by Holly Wall
The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s exhibition Art 365 will open at [ArtSpace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City in March 2011. Five artists each receive a $12,000 honorarium and one year of interaction with curator Shannon Fitzgerald. Visit www.Art365.org for more information. Aaron Hauck’s artistic exploration of consumerism led him to create a new moniker for Generation Y: the “I Generation.” “I grew up during possibly the most hyper-accelerated period of technological advancement in human history, and I began teaching at the beginning of the Facebook and Twitter world that we know so well today,” said Hauck, an art professor at East Central University in Ada. “My work is focused on the relationships that exist between consumerism and consumption, and the impact that they have on the environment. “The ‘I Generation’ — or its more commonly known name ‘Generation Y’ — is seen as the successor of Generation X. I use the term ‘I Generation’ for two reasons. First, the letter ‘I’ has became synonymous with many of the over-commercialized products that are used today, which we think help us adapt to the world around us. “Second, the focus on ‘I’ as its role as a firstperson pronoun highlights, in our contemporary society, our quest to carve out our own individual identities. This quest is pulling us away from the face-to-face community in which our ancestors first adapted to this world.”
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Cast resin Clovis points
For his Art 365 project, titled Transmutations of the Stone Age and “I Generation,” Hauck uses sculpture to juxtapose society of the Stone Age with the ‘I Generation.’ In his project proposal, Hauck wrote: “While the earliest human settlement of Oklahoma is evidenced primarily from the presence of a single artifact type called the Clovis point, the ‘I Generation’ signifies the largest growth of different media for the creation and expression of self-identity in human history. The exhibition will express the complex and rather confusing transmutations of the fixation on selfidentity in the ‘I Generation.’ I will explore the fine line between human cultural evolution, the banalities of modern consumerism, and their relationship with the environment.” The project consists of two series of sculptures. One series is composed of replicas of Clovis points made from brightly colored plastic similar to that used to make portable electronic devices. “A Clovis point is a highly specific stone tool made by hunter-gatherers during their colonization of different environments of North America at the end of the Stone Age,” Hauck said. “These points will juxtapose implements used in today’s consumer culture.