BRUCE JOEL CUTEAN OF THIRDSTONE STUDIOS

For most of the last couple decades, Bruce Joel Cutean (aka Admiral Pluto Krozabeeep), has been the founder and owner of ThirdStone Galleries, West Michigan's premier outlet for innovative contemporary art in all styles and media. With its former locations in both Saugatuck and Fennville, ThirdStone has now transformed into curating shows of ThirdStone artists' works in cities across the country and soon Europe and Asia.

Bruce's own artwork on the other hand, is quite another matter. An artist since his early childhood in Chicago, his work has spanned many different media and wildly divergent (sometimes even disheveled, depraved and/or demented), styles and methods.

In recent years, his work has reflected a return to his Dadaist roots; often wrought with reckless abandon, bizarre juxtapositions of elements, and incongruous contexts. The provocative end results range from the sacred to the profane, with silliness-in-extremis a frequent component. Bruce's work falls into several divergent and wildly divergent streams. His 3D assemblage constructions, known as Assembloids™, are peculiar constructs of different found and handmade elements using a broad variety of contexts, materials and ludicrous colour sensibility. The 'bloid factory at ThirdStone Studios has been busy in recent months, secretly churning out a huge new assortment of visualvirtual meta-travesties.  His Assembloids™ have been variously described in a variety of media as "Existential-Essential Idiot Toys for a damaged millennium", "Depraved objects of turgidly insouciant Neo-Dada Iconography" and, in at least one review, "A thoroughly ridiculized, (and wildly ineffectual), ritualized repurposed and highly aberrant version of recycling." Often these works are rendered as "shrines" to selected bits of our society's bizarre and fickle fascination with endless acquisition and possession

In between his manic-fueled bouts of Assembloid™ engineering, he frequents (somewhat surreptitiously), another favourite avenue of expression, delving bravely yet stupidly into his somewhat abstract approach to his painting/mixed media work where his demented/deluded colour sensibilities really move boldly (and disturbingly), to the fore. Bruce's curated ThirdStone Gallery group shows shows will resume in the Summer of 2013 in a variety of locations. In addition, a new venture, his ThirdStone Studios Gallery (featuring mostly his own Assembloids™ will open in his downtown Fennville studio the Summer of 2013. Contact: artmonster@thirdstoned.com www.thirdstoneart.com