The Amuk Id Cathedral: An Institution
1993
Installation and performance: mock cathedral with interactive confessional installed at The Dougherty Art Center, Austin, TX; University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX; Lynn Goode Gallery, Houston, TX; and Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio, TX
The Amuk ID Cathedral is a compilation of objects and recent sculpture arranged as a mock cathedral within the gallery. Altars, relics, a baptismal and other paraphernalia represent an unconventional set of values and uses characterized by the psychological and spiritual reactions to any number of dilemmas. Much of the work is archaic in design and incorporates scientific elements. Pieces include kinetic and electrical devices. In this context, the Cathedral becomes an institution for anxieties and latent conscious motivators. The place where an out of control subconscious is the source of emotional dysfunction: An id run amuk.
BRUDNIAK
The landscape he has created with his latest sculptures is dark,
frightening, reminiscent of ancient sacrificial structures and torture
chambers. And although they are assemblages, they resemble real objects that at some time might have really existed. Thus the physical beauty of Brudniak’s work is balanced by the horror of obsession, addiction, and captivity. Caught in such conflicts, we feel danger is everywhere.
ELIZABETH MCBRIDE – Art News
Brudniak merges science and religion in his eerie Amuk Id Cathedral, which manages to be both medieval and futuristic—a bizarre layering of historical periods. There are altar-like devices in The Hall Of Chambers a Saturated Well of Baptism, filled with “animated fluid,” mock instruments of ritualistic and therapeutic cure in “The Hall of Therapies and Sacraments” and a confessional, equipped with a headset intercom. The merger of scientific instruments with sacred furniture suggests a future dark age, something like Walter Miller’s classic science fiction novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, when a nuclear apocalypse erases scientific knowledge and mad isolated monks treat decrepit scientific machines as icons of a lost golden era.
DAN GODDARD – San Antonio Express News
Brudniak’s strongest achievement lies in his ability to draw on personal experience and appeal to a broad audience. He never becomes self-indulgent, making his audience endure the details of his private life, but rather shares and thus affirms life’s inevitable stresses and struggles. Because the work invites participation and play, he avoids sentimentality, opting for the more disorienting effects of the amusement park.
SANDRA GOLDMAN – Austin American Statesman
The Confessional Of The Amuk Id Cathedral
1992-1993
Assemblage with communication electronics
5 x 10 x 5 inches
Participants share confession via pilot communication helmets.
Click to purchase or inquire about this artwork
Most of the confessional sessions that I staffed were filled with silliness—mock war radio chatter, etc, via the pilot headsets—but on occasion, I was presented with an honest confession from an anxious patron. There were several stories I remain sworn to keep forever secret—some that could have landed my patrons in prison or worse, ever their tales be told.
BRUDNIAK
At the far end of the gallery is The Confessional of Amuk Id, a burlap chamber in which two visitors can communicate anonymously through microphones imbedded in motorcycle [sic: fighter pilot] helmets. The artist took confession in the booth on the night of the opening. Upon entering the chamber, however, the visitor is asked to sign a vow of secrecy and to obey the confessional rules, the most significant of which are as follows: What you hear must stay in confession. Be serious, patient and compassionate in your role as a confessor-therapist.
It is in the confessional booth that Brudniak’s wedding of psychology and religious ritual is most clear. The unburdening of guilt and the acknowledgment of human fallibility are released privately in both therapy and in prayer.
SANDRA GOLDMAN – Austin American Statesman