Lisa Marie Barren uses fat the way a painter would use a canvas.
Her photo show "Fat" premieres at 6 p.m. Friday with a reception in the John Sommers Gallery.
"Fat is just my medium. It's what I work with. I don't have paint," Barren said.
Nick Angelo will provide live music.
The exhibit will feature seven projectors showing four-minute clips of five models' molded, folded fat.
Barren's images aim to challenge society's views of beauty.
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"I'm trying to redefine the word 'fat,' which is really crazy," Barren said. "The thing with my work is I'm not for fat or against fat. I'm just commenting on it. A lot of people think I'm glorifying fat people, but that's not what I am doing."
Barren, a projection installationist, attended New Mexico State as an undergrad and served as an intern to artists Petah Coyne and Elana Herzog in New York City before returning to New Mexico to pursue an MFA. She used to make sculptures before working in projection arts.
"I would be an electronic or video artist, but I feel like the projector is like my medium," she said. "That's the host to birth my art. It's a chaotic way to work."
She said fat can be beautiful.
"If you saw this person walking down the street with their shirt off with fat hanging out, you'd be like, 'Gross! That's disgusting,'" Barren said. "But now they are shaped ascetically with tonal ranges, with movements, with repetitions."
Barren would film each model's fat for 25 minutes, of which she could salvage about two minutes.
"There's always the model in front of me, and then I feel like there's this transaction that happens when I am shooting the video," she said. "I don't see it as a person anymore. I see it as a different entity or form."
Initially, Barren's models felt awkward revealing their body fat.
"They are sitting there with little clothes on and exposing themselves," Barren said. "You're normally not supposed to show your fat. You're not supposed to show your flaws. And I am asking them to do that. But with the transaction that happens through the lenses, these forms come out. Once they see what I am doing with it, they get comfortable."
The technical setup for Barren's work is intricate. Each projector is controlled by a separate remote, and each must be adjusted for maximum effect and quality of images.
"Really, every projector is different, and you just have to treat like you would different paint colors," Barren said. "You just have to play with it for a really long time to get it to work. I'll probably spend about eight hours, probably an hour on each projector, trying to get the image right. It's nuts."
Once all the footage is gathered, Barren edits the piece as little as possible.
"I don't like to edit at all. I don't like the process. I feel it interrupts the natural experience. I don't like to cut and paste everything. I just try to do a beginning to an end."
Even using basic editing, Barren spent more than 130 hours editing.
"Video art is really apparent in the art community, but I don't think people grasp how intense it is, especially projected installation."
Despite her preparation, she is still unsure of what the art will look like until all the images are projected in tandem with one another.
"You don't ever really know what your work looks like until it's up," Barren said. "I work on these videos on these little tiny screens for months and months, but I don't get to really see what they are like until a show or something."
Barren's work has already garnered strong reactions in the community, she said.
"My cards are getting taken like crazy," Barren said. "I keep putting them up around places and someone keeps taking them down. I had one where someone got a gym membership with a picture of someone with a really hot body that obviously airbrushed that was put on top of the card. I just moved it so that it was on the edge of the card and not in the middle."
Still, Barren is excited for her exhibit.
"My hope would be that it stands out, and that's a typical opening, and it's not saying something typical," Barren said. "I hope it stands out as something different, something that takes a risk."
"Fat"
Friday, 6-9 p.m.
John Sommers Gallery
Free
