VISUAL ARTS

In his most recent collection, “Elements of Manipulation,” Kaloust Guedel often combines ready-made text from newspapers with thickly applied paint in candy colors. Orange, red and lime entice the eye where, upon closer examination, words of grave import are obscured by color and cutouts of seductive women and other shapes. His execution is direct, and the result is energetic collage, fragments of a puzzle – not unlike the appearance of a heavily redacted document which leaves the viewer to fill in the blanks.

“I feel a responsibility,” he says, “to make the viewer aware of something that has not been expressed in visual art – how easily our sources of information can be manipulated because advertisers, political campaigns, governmental institutions and media outlets employ strategies to direct public opinion to their advantage often without consideration of facts.”