TM Sisters – Ideal Tonight

TM Sisters, I Deal Tonight, 2009, mixed media and electricity. Art and Culture Center of Hollywood

Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Florida

February 20 - April 5, 2009

By Cara Despain

Walking into “Ideal Tonight,” the latest endeavor by the sibling duo, Monica and Tasha Lopez De Victoria (aka the TM Sisters), at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, is akin to walking into a nightclub or bar-low lighting, lots of young people, loud music, and glinting lights.   Considering that it was an art exhibition, the camera flashes and inclination of viewers to softly start dancing didn’t seem the least bit disruptive. It’s like a walk-through of early MTV culture-young, graphic, blazing and fluorescent. Combining all the elements to compose an environment-2-d, 3-d, video, neon lights, and performance-the TM Sisters did just that:  constructed a glowing microcosm that encompassed the past, present, and future of their generation.

Justin Broadbent, portrait of TM Sisters

Referencing the 1980’s, 90’s, and the right now, the sisters charge the space with electric lightening that zaps and blinks across walls-intersecting with paintings to electrify the gold paint, glitter, and deadpan, often out-of-focus photos they are collaged with. In fact, most of the photos used in the show are merely unglamorous pics snapped from the sisters’ earlier years; awkward, candid, and in sharp contrast to the clean-lined, illuminated surfaces of the paintings. Gold plush furniture, when sat upon, even controls the speed of the lights.  It’s like a funky, fresh Florida version of Studio 54.The bodacious colors both in the paintings and projections reveal a young, very Miami-specific, visual language; at the same time, they allude to the “supercool,” brazen brights of young Berlin. The videos combine acid atmospheres and textures with portraits and figures moving or dancing against them and, especially when combined with the live musical performance, prove to be very youthful media. They also note the sisters’ VJing experience-which is easy to visualize as they both stand at the brain center of the operation, adjusting and digitally collaging to live beats.

The last stop in the exhibition is perhaps the most subtle and blatant at the same time. It is a stenciled design taking up an entire wall, which requires light to charge and dark to see-sort of the theme of the show as a whole. Using phosphorescent paint of varying shades, they dedicated an entire room to a glow-in-the-dark experience, which, when taken in with the rest, seems to confirm the generation of the artists. Although the exhibition speaks beyond this generation, it seems to resonate especially with the folks who hold rollerblades, neon, and glow-in-the-dark close to their hearts. It’s art that’s not afraid to act its age. Who said Generation X had no cultural relevance!

Cara Despain is an artist and freelance art writer from Salt Lake City.  She received a BFA from the University of Utah in 2006, and has recently been traveling and working from Salt Lake, Berlin, and Miami.