Who needs TV? Story’s in the lamp

Leila Navidi

“The Sirens of TV” by Todd VonBastiaans glows in his downtown Las Vegas gallery. VonBastiaans’ show “Proteja Mis Ojos / Protect My Eyes” consists of dioramas inside vintage TV lamps, which he said were used to quell early TV watchers’ fears of radiation. The show opens Thursday at Trifecta Gallery. Many of the dioramas use tiny props but leave the story behind the setting to the viewer’s imagination.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Wednesday, March 5, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Leila Navidi

A detail from “Stick to the Stuff You Know” by Todd VonBastiaans in his gallery in downtown Las Vegas shows the artist’s playful use of props and delight in color and light. VonBastiaans created the miniatures at the suggestion of Trifecta Gallery owner Marty Walsh.

A scuba diver is missing a leg. There is blood.

Chairs and tables are strewn about in an otherwise empty Mexican strip club.

Props for a production of “High School Musical” have fallen over.

These are the details. As for the rest of the story, it’s up to you.

It’s all a big mystery taking place in the bellies of vintage TV lamps, reconfigured by Todd VonBastiaans, owner of Atomic Todd and lover of all things kitsch.

The lamps, on display at Trifecta Gallery, double as dioramas and play on the subdued hysteria that came with the advent of television.

As VonBastiaans explains it, viewers new to television in the 1950s were concerned about radiation. To quell their fears, decorative ceramic lamps were given or sold to customers so they wouldn’t be watching in complete darkness.

Over the past few months VonBastiaans collected the lamps through eBay, removed the main bulbs from the alcoves in back and, similar to a ship-in-a-bottle project, reconstructed scenes and environments using miniatures from Germany. LED lights are used to carry the narrative.

“These lamps were supposed to protect your eyes, and I’m putting something in them that you probably shouldn’t see,” he says. “Also, there is definitely that reference of pulp fiction, which was big when these lamps came out.”

But the work is not just a collection of dioramas for dioramas’ sake.

The miniature Luxor hotel room, also part of the exhibit, is a mess. In another piece, the bondage basement is askew.

“Something has happened, and you’re the first one to walk in,” VonBastiaans says.

Anyone who has been a fan of the themed exhibits at Atomic Todd will likely appreciate the exhibit, titled “Proteja Mis Ojos / Protect My Eyes.”

It miniaturizes the flavor of Atomic Todd, where scenes and props accent the art.

The idea for all of this came when VonBastiaans was pitching a proposal for a public art project. Marty Walsh, owner of Trifecta and a member of the selection committee, had what she calls an “epiphany” and asked him whether he felt like scaling his projects down a little.

VonBastiaans is more accustomed to working on large architectural projects with the lighting company he owns, rather than creating tiny environments where furniture is the size of a thumbnail and a stripper pole is a little over an inch tall.

But he says this gives him a chance to combine craft and novelty, art and intellect.

Some lamps feature scenes devoid of people, including a high school gymnasium where a class production of “High School Musical” is being staged.

Others, lamps that come with stylized glazed animals perched atop a container, incorporate miniature scenes using people: men cruising for sex in a public park and a nuclear or chemical disaster during which a naked woman in a gully is blasted by lights of different colors. Someone in a hazmat suit stares down at her.

A piece that involves a pineapple lamp, constructed with golden orbs of glass, includes two very tiny elderly people wedged into the crevices. Throughout the piece are people the couple had known throughout their lives.

When the lights are on, VonBastiaans says, “it gives the illusion that everybody was trapped in amber.”

The lamp with scuba divers casts their shadows on the wall behind the lamp.

Why? Don’t ask.

VonBastiaans wants the story to take off on its own.