Box TV Sets as Art: From Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack to Veronica Fernandez

They may no longer a fixture in homes, but old-fashioned box TVs still inspire artists as symbols of mass media and objects of everyday living. 

Curated by Rochelle Steiner 

Today few of us own traditional television sets, as the console gave way long ago to newer devices. Yet our fascination with that familiar box persists. TV influences our lives in countless ways—from fashion to travel, with the new term “set jetting” used to characterize vacation destinations inspired by what appears on our screens. 

For decades, television—both the set and its content—has also drawn the attention of a wide range of visual artists. Characters, locations, storylines and commercials have all infiltrated paintings and photographs, as well as sculpture and video, with artists quick to consider, mimic and critique what they see on the small screen. Artists have likewise used TVs as props to convey domestic intimacy and nostalgia for another time or place. Even artists who grew up after the transformation to flat screens and handheld gadgets have depicted “magic boxes” within public spaces, such as bars and lounges, and in the privacy of homes.

This portfolio by a diverse group of artists parallels the evolution of televised content. While Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz were attentive to the social politics of the medium beginning in the early 1960s, Barkley L. Hendricks chronicled the shows broadcast in his local pub between 1988 and 1997. For artists like Oliver Clegg and Paul Winstanley, the TV offers a window to other spaces, both interior and exterior. Meanwhile, the work of Martin Wong and Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack remind us that its power to communicate is entirely one-way.

As traditional TV sets approach extinction, they still provide a sense of connection and familiarity that we don’t often find in the machines now regularly held in the palms of our hands

---

Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack

The work of Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack takes many forms, including painting, sculpture, and performance. This piece, Tell-A-Lie-Vision, casts a critical eye toward TV, particularly the trauma and violence he associates with this everyday object and its imagery—from the child’s ball that perhaps broke the screen to the belt that might have been used to punish the child. 

---

Tschabalala Self

Combining paint as well as found materials including paper, fabric and thread, Tschabalala Self creates fictionalized portraits like this one of former NBA star Latrell Sprewell. Here, she depicts an alternative view of the athlete widely known for his athletic skills as well as for an incident in which he physically attacked his then-coach. In this fantasy, the game plays on the TV as Sprewell is locked in an amorous embrace.   

---

Veronica Fernandez

Inspired by the drama and disorder of domestic life, L.A.-based artist Veronica Fernandez often paints from her memories of childhood as well as family photos. Here, a jumble of figures, animals and furniture, including a television playing a wrestling match, merge in a chaotic living room. Above it all, a ghostly figure appears to leap out of the TV into the room, like a wrestler jumping out of the ring and crossing into the realm of family life.

---

Paul Winstanley

London-based artist Paul Winstanley frequently depicts public spaces, including lobbies, offices, lounges and other rooms used for gatherings. These 1960s-style interiors, inspired by photographs he typically takes himself and then re-creates in paintings, appear nearly empty—except for rows of chairs and, at times, a television to distract from the bleakness of the surroundings.

---

Martin Wong

Martin Wong (1946-1999) depicted in painstaking detail the urban conditions of Manhattan’s Lower East Side—including its streets, tenement buildings, subway cars and graffiti. One recurring feature of his work is the bricks that form many of the city’s buildings. In Untitled (Brick TV), he covered the screen of a portable set in a brick pattern, perhaps as commentary on its one-way communication stream.

---

Christopher Suarez

Ceramicist Christopher Suarez is known for modeling objects on architectural spaces that bring people and communities together. These include restaurants and bodegas in the neighborhood and stadiums in his native Southern California. Recently, he has turned his attention to everyday objects that serve a similar unifying function, including the portable TV.

---

Joe Biel

In his Stacks series, L.A.-based Joe Biel creates vertical bundles of portable TVs, with outstretched antennas and interconnected cords. On the individual screens, he draws images derived from the history of film, TV and art that mash up visual culture: a mushroom cloud, a detail of a Jan van Eyck painting, Benito and Rachele Mussolini, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien and a man with one eye closed.

---

Barkley L. Hendricks

Television was a favorite theme of photographer Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017). Between the late ‘80s and ‘90s, he produced a series
of images shot inside the Dutch Tavern in New London, Connecticut, that captured the changing broadcasts on the pub’s ever-present set—from Richard Nixon to Julia Childs, sports figures to Miss America, Pee-Wee Herman to Big Bird.

---

Brenna Youngblood

Brenna Youngblood’s work is inspired by familiar domestic items, including furniture and appliances, arranged in paintings and collages mixed with images of people, pets, and souvenirs. The California native’s content is derived from private and social experiences. Recurring images of televisions are transformed from everyday icons into abstract, glowing forms.

---

Oliver Clegg

In his recent work, the British conceptual artist Oliver Clegg has created surreal fantasy spaces filled with familiar objects. His images of studio interiors are filled with whimsical paintings on easels and repeated objects on shelves. Television sets and windows are common features, providing two perspectives on the exterior world. Often the same image appears on both, creating a doubling, looping effect.

---

Edward Kienholz & Nancy Reddin Kienholz

Throughout their careers working together and separately, Edward Kienholz (1927-1994) and Nancy Reddin Kienholz (1943-2019) were fascinated by TV. They had TVs switched on in every room of their home and studio, all day, every day. “I have long had a love/hate relationship with American TV,” Edward once wrote. “To try to understand my ongoing stupidity and perhaps to express some kind of critical objectivity, I find that I keep making TV sets out of anything that vaguely resembles a TV apparatus (oil containers, blocks of concrete, surplus jerry cans, etc.).”

---