If you don’t initially understand the new art exhibition coming to Gainesville this weekend, local artist Robert Ritter won’t mind. In fact, he’ll have accomplished a key part of his vision.
“Picture Perfect Poetry, or Quixote’s Phantasms de Amor,” is a collection of Ritter’s conceptual art that will be open to the public from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Feb. 5 at Tempo Bistro to Go, 1516 NW 13th St.
Ritter, a Santa Fe College alumnus who lives near Paynes Prairie, said his art is something Gainesville hasn’t seen in about five years.
“This concept piece is really different,” the 48-year-old explained. “What I aim to accomplish in this is, basically, the piece takes on a role of a social pariah or gadfly, if you will.”
Ritter was inspired by an October 2010 trip to Costa Rica, where he stumbled upon a house with an outside wall featuring vignettes from Miguel de Cervantes’ famous story “Don Quixote.” The owner of a landscape business by day, he spent about three months creating his art exhibition.
“It drummed up something inside of me that just rang true,” he said.
The show is similar to a performance art piece, except there’s no performer, he said. Rather, viewers act as an integral part of the experience.
Ritter set up the piece to resemble a mock tribunal, one in which personal beliefs on religion, politics and death are tested.
“Whatever it is that you believe in, the practical applications of your theoretical beliefs will be put on trial in the show,” he explained.
As guests enter the exhibition, they will be handed a set of papers that explain the concept. You suspend your disbelief, forgetting all preconceived notions and allowing yourself to explore different images and poems.
His mission, he said, is to create a whole new art form, one that some might find “disorienting” at first.
Ritter expressly challenges his audience through a series of stations he calls “exhibits” and various supporting-evidence pieces, ending with a final station of suppositions that calls for critical analysis of personal beliefs.
Ritter does not desire to be a career artist. Instead, he uses his art as a way to express what he feels if it’s relevant to society at the time.
“As an artist, you’ve got to get a little more creative now,” he said. “In the words of Voltaire, ‘It’s not enough to conquer; one must seduce.’”
One way he’s attempting to daze his audience is through a hanging piece of art that can be transformed into a book, a concept he calls an anomaly.
“To my knowledge, no one has ever produced this in the world,” he said.
Through this new form of art, in conjunction with the whole exhibition, he hopes to jab at commonly held beliefs and act as a persistent social pariah.
“People don’t listen to philosophers anymore. Artists sort of take on that role,” he said.
