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One Halloween when I was a kid, some of the parents in my hometown made a haunted house with a room of sensory bins. We could reach inside and feel grape 鈥渆yeballs鈥� in corn syrup, soft spaghetti 鈥渂rains鈥� and other creepy, slimy stuff, which both thrilled and repulsed us.

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was obsessed with slime and goo, which not only repulsed him physically but troubled the notion of a stable, orderly universe, which he had been taught.

鈥淚 want to let go of the slimy, and it sticks to me, it draws me, it sucks at me,鈥� he wrote in 鈥淏eing and Nothingness鈥� in 1943.

If the primary organ of the philosopher, the brain, is itself a slimy, squishy, jiggly thing, he wondered whether he should trust it. What does it mean that the organ we use to think and reason with is essentially a blob of custard?

鈥淭he slimy is myself,鈥� Sartre concluded, with more than a hint of self-loathing.

He wouldn鈥檛 have liked the spaghetti brains in the haunted house. But he may have liked 鈥淪TICKY haha,鈥� Al (Allyson) Lupovich鈥檚 autobiographical exhibition currently at Bingo Gallery. Lupovich, a Santa Fe-based emerging artist with connections to Meow Wolf, uses sticky, gooey substances to evoke a phantasmagoric stew of childhood memories, both humorous and traumatic.

The centerpiece of the show is 鈥淪elf Portrait haha,鈥� an upturned school desk whose underside is pustulated with colorful wads of chewing gum. Lupovich has transferred black-and-white images of her own face onto the gum using an industrial UV printer, then stretched and pressed the gum with her fingers, creating a landscape of warped, misshapen faces reminiscent of Salvador Dal铆鈥檚 melting clocks. Were it not for the title, there would be no way of knowing that all of these faces belonged to the same person. Some are so distorted, in fact, that they鈥檙e no longer human. They look like space aliens, lemurs and cartoon ghosts.

Viewers often expect self-portraits to convey psychological truths about the artist, whether it鈥檚 the world-weary soul-searching of Rembrandt van Rijn鈥檚 鈥淪elf Portrait at the Age of 63,鈥� or the hard-won strength and endurance seen in many of Frida Kahlo鈥檚 self-portraits. But beginning in the late 1970s, the postmodern photographer Cindy Sherman thwarted these expectations by producing hundreds of photographs in which she portrayed fictitious characters, none of whom were meant to be her.

Lupovich鈥檚 鈥淪elf Portrait haha鈥� takes for granted the postmodern idea that selfhood is multifaceted and changeable, but it doesn鈥檛 stop there. Rather, it represents a new kind of psychological portraiture. Just as Sherman is unrecognizable in many of her photographs, Lupovich is unrecognizable in many of her chewing gum portraits. But because the act of sticking chewing gum under a desk is an illicit behavior associated with childhood shame and disgust, Lupovich鈥檚 work is psychologically loaded in ways that Sherman鈥檚 is not. Moreover, the malleability of the gum suggests the malleability of the human psyche, particularly during childhood and adolescence, when episodes of abuse or neglect can negatively reshape one鈥檚 personality and self-image. The distorted chewing gum faces reflect a wounded psyche that sees itself as monstrous.

On the rear wall of the gallery, Lupovich has installed a series of interactive photocollages. Cut-outs of relatives and furniture from old family photographs are suspended in goo behind sheets of transparent vinyl, and visitors are invited to touch and squish the art, causing the people, chairs and other objects inside to shift and float around. This series is called 鈥淗elp them Disintegrate!鈥� because the goo Lupovich uses, arnica gel, is intended to make the images deteriorate over time. Arnica gel is marketed as an over-the-counter topical treatment for muscle aches and bruises, although it is toxic if ingested or used on broken skin. These dual associations of toxicity and healing make it a potent metaphor for the difficult and potentially dangerous processes of revisiting childhood wounds in order to heal from them.

Although the work is about trauma, 鈥淗elp them Disintegrate!鈥� is also a fun, interactive game. Lupovich uses play and humor throughout the show, not to sidestep serious issues but to confront them in less stressful ways. We may not know the people in her goo collages, but we still enjoy squishing them. There鈥檚 something undeniably cathartic about the work, whether we find ourselves fantasizing about squishing away toxic people from our pasts, or we simply want to do our part to help the artist heal.

For me, the texture of the goo unlocked a fun childhood memory of squishing things at the haunted house. But it also made me think about the gooeyness of the human brain 鈥� something that horrified and nauseated Sartre. It can be scary to think that our brains are constantly changing and that our memories fade and deform over time. But without that neuroplasticity, the brain鈥檚 ability to change and adapt, how could we ever learn anything new? How could we heal from past traumas?

A short video piece in the show uses found footage of young men, possibly teenagers, boxing in a grassy lot. For each fight, Lupovich has digitally keyed out one of the fighters, replacing him with footage from her family鈥檚 archive of home movies. The home movie clips she chooses include almost no people or recognizable places. Rather, we see clouds, water and a hand touching grass 鈥� moments of stillness and connection with nature that contrast with the explicit violence of the found-footage fight scenes.

Additionally, Lupovich has replaced the original audio with a slowly strummed, melancholic guitar 鈥� music that reframes the fight for dominance as a search for connection. 鈥淚 loved that sometimes there would be slow moments in the fighting where they would be almost caressing each other,鈥� she said.

Lupovich鈥檚 video recalls Paul Pfeiffer鈥檚 digitally altered boxing matches, which he has been exhibiting since 2015. In that series, Pfeiffer uses postproduction tools to erase one of the boxers in each fight, making it look like the other, still-visible boxer is being attacked by invisible forces. Pfeiffer鈥檚 work is much more painstaking than Lupovich鈥檚 from a technical perspective, and his concept is simpler and more cleanly executed. Lupovich鈥檚 video, by contrast, contains much more ambiguity. In fact, the home movie footage gets so abstract at times that I don鈥檛 know what I鈥檓 looking at, but I believe that鈥檚 intentional. When viewed alongside the other work in 鈥淪TICKY haha,鈥� much of which deals with the failings of human memory 鈥� particularly in relation to repressed trauma 鈥� the video鈥檚 visual and emotional ambiguities make sense. If I鈥檓 a child whose parents are fighting all the time, for instance, I might learn to detach or dissociate. Instead of watching them, I might put on headphones and look out the window at the pretty clouds going by. Lupovich鈥檚 video transposes melancholic beauty onto scenes of violence, mirroring the ways real people cope with stressful or upsetting situations.

There鈥檚 no literal slime in the video, although the participants do get dirty when they roll on the ground, and Lupovich's postproduction effects dissolve the boundaries of their bodies.

Other slimy substances in 鈥淪TICKY haha鈥� include a maple syrup bucket (a nod to Lupovich鈥檚 Canadian roots), an old orthodontic retainer and (in a photograph) a badly rotting pumpkin.

鈥淕rowing up, I found refuge (from trauma) in humor and all things slightly grotesque,鈥� Lupovich said.

For 鈥淒umped Memories,鈥� the artist has taken dozens of her late grandfather鈥檚 old Kodachrome slides, including scenes from Miami and New York, and dumped them into a lumpy mound of concrete. The work is internally lit, and the slides glow brightly.

鈥淚 was tasked with taking care of my family鈥檚 slides, and the concrete sculpture was my way of almost destroying them, and being careless with them and letting go of the burden of mothering them, in a way,鈥� Lupovich said.

Like much of 鈥淪TICKY haha,鈥� 鈥淒umped Memories鈥� reflects two opposing urges: preservation and destruction. By dumping slides into concrete, or dunking photos into a corrosive goo, Lupovich simultaneously archives and erases memories. The slides in 鈥淒umped Memories鈥� can never again be extracted, put back into a slide carousel and projected onto a screen, but people can still view them. In fact, many more people will see her grandfather鈥檚 slides because of this sculpture, even if they鈥檙e not seeing them in the way he had intended. But rather than abandon the slides to mold and heat and dust, she keeps them intact just enough to tell her own story with them.

鈥淭he urge to destroy is also a creative urge,鈥� as the radical 19th century Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakunin once put it. Lupovich鈥檚 incomplete destruction of her family鈥檚 image archives 鈥� photos, slides and home movies 鈥� is both radical and creative. She mashes up and reconstitutes old images until they feel lighter and brighter. She extricates herself, slowly but surely, from the muck of oppressive memories, allowing new kinds of beauty and humor to shine through.

鈥淪TICKY haha鈥� opened on April 11, but your next and final chance to experience it is the closing reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday, May 2. Don鈥檛 miss it!

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the sa国际传媒官网网页入口. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at .