V&A is pleased to present Kevin Bewersdorf’s Monuments to the INFOspirit opening on Sunday September 7th, and running through October 12th, 2008.

Kevin Bewersdorf describes his current art practice as “one of self-branding, identical to the practices of corporations such as Fox, Wendy’s, Toyota, The Presbyterian Church, Green Day, Cookie Dough Creations, and Benson Plumbing. These practices include creating stock photography, jingles and songs, promotional items and collateral, text and copy, logos and design elements, and other video and performance based materials to construct my presence in the spirit world of the web. Like a convenience store that sells milk at a loss to get people inside the store, all of my activities in the physical world I considers a ‘loss leader’ for my website, maximumsorrow.com.”

In Monuments to the INFOspirit, the work installed is the physical incarnation of Bewersdorf’s work that mostly exists on the Web. The poster “Monuments to the INFOspirit2” graphs permutations of the letters A, B, and C as a grid of corporate logos. All of the logos, found on the internet, were selected so that the terms AMERICAN, BUSINESS, and CHRISTIAN occurred most frequently in the acronyms. In another piece, on a video screen Bewersdorf portrays himself as an Internet Guru meditating at his laptop. Additionally, a brochure altar is installed to implement the scripture of Bewersdrof’s current brand Maximum Sorrow. A guide to the Four Sacred Logos of Maximum Sorrow – these brochures merge corporate speak with spiritual speak providing an instruction manual on accepting the infinite mediocrity in today’s marketplace.

Born in Naperville, Illinois in 1980, Bewersdorf was trained as a classical pianist. He studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and received his BFA in 2004. He has co-written, scored and starred in several independent feature films as part of the Mumblecore group of filmmakers, most notably LOL released in 2006. He has performed and had 2 person, and group exhibitions in Dallas, Berlin, and New York. He exhibited his written piece “Why I Never Print My Photos” at the gallery in October 2007. He currently shows and promotes his work on the internet. For more information go to www.spiritsurfers.com. Monuments to the INFOspirit is Bewersdorf’s first solo exhibition.