Bruce Conner

Conner makes things that you see and at once you are dizzy with pleasure, fright and pure mind-jambling curiosity. He makes your eyes trip. And he does all this using a fairly traditional framework of charo-scura based illustration, etching and ink-blotting. O and his video art, which most praise as his strongest output. Based in San Fransisco, Conner gained most of his recognition by doing nylon-webbed trash assemblages. Everybody knows him by "The Child", a piece in reference to the execution of California death row inmate Caryl Chessman, which many believed to be caused by the backwards nature of the judicial system of the time. I would pose the opinion that this assemblage and the others Conner did in the late fifties and early sixties are wrongly given higher interest and position over his illustrations and two dimensional work, which are, again, truly amazing. Based solely upon the detail, composition and subject matter of series' such as CHRIST, MANDALA, BOOK and others, his 2-d work is the most visually inspiring.