Performance artist plans Valley visit for exhibition at Youngstown Butler

Rom Amstutz uses
elements of performance and theater in his art.

By TRACEY D’ASTOLFO

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

YOUNGSTOWN — New York-based performance artist Ron Amstutz will return to his hometown this month to show his work.

The Boardman High graduate’s exhibition, titled “Right Roads and Wrong Ways,” opens Sunday at the Butler Institute of American Art and runs through April 27. Amstutz will be at the museum from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday to meet the public.

His exhibition will consist of an installation art set, which he made expressly for the Butler show.

Amstutz isn’t a traditional artist, and his work isn’t easy to describe. He uses elements of theater and performance in his sets.

“I make sets, paint them, and perform in them. When the performance and [video] documentation are finished, I repaint the same set in a different color scheme and completely repeat the performance,” he said.

The sets are made for a video camera shooting from a fixed angle that does not change through multiple paintings and performances. Viewers watch on a monitor.

“I essentially see the monitor as a stage, the camera angle as a theatrical sight line,” said Amstutz.

Amstutz attended Rochester Institute of Technology for photography as an undergraduate, and studied art at UCLA for his master’s degree.

“I can’t imagine not doing it, that is, making art,” he said. “I think that art is something that chooses the person, not the person choosing to do art. By that I mean that I have to do it, it is a part of what I do, who I am.”

In the piece Amstutz has made for the Butler, he wants the viewer to experience what the performer does. He said he always has his audience in mind while he is creating his art.

“I think of the viewer a great deal when I make my work and it will be interesting to hear what people think of it at the Butler,” he said. “The installation I have made for the museum addresses quite directly the viewer’s relationship with viewing an artwork. They will be as much a viewer as an actual participant.”

For the installation at the Butler, Amstutz has made a symmetrical set out of many camera angles with monitors inside where the viewer can see himself as he moves around the piece.

“The set is activated not by video, but the actions of the people in it,” he said. “The set is disorienting because it is broken up into four parts, each part having an opposite, which is identical to the other. The camera angles on one side were meticulously repeated on the other side. This happens twice, so the repetition is doubled.”

He will also be showing a video that is made up of footage from other performances in sets that he made. Photographs that document past performances will also be on display.

Amstutz will have his first solo show in New York in the fall.

“I am really excited for this year, as I have the show at the Butler and one in New York,” he said. “Hopefully, these will lead to other things; I feel confident that they will. I will continue to make work and, hopefully, the pieces will fall together.”

For more information on Amstutz and images of his work, go to wallspacegallery.com/amstutz.html.