First Year MFA Gallery Show

Overall, there were a large number of exhibits in the MFA show that piqued my interest. I sometimes find that I have difficulty appreciating the content of artwork outside of my own medium of graphic design, especially with painting and sculpture. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself drawn in to many of the pieces done in these mediums. The addition of the two portable walls was also a nice addition to the gallery, helping to divide the huge central room which normally comes across as really massive. Having rather small pieces hung on these walls also seemed like a good choice, making them seem more precious than they might have been if they shared the wall space with much larger works.

I'd like to start by talking about the Jian Chen paintings on the walls outside the entrance to the gallery. Intially, these artworks are dominated by the tremendous, stylized nude female forms which seem to be melting down the canvas. They were disturbing and rather striking, but I quickly found my interest drawn toward the small elements of the paintings-- specifically, the depiction of space. In one painting, the abstract white "abyss" that the art figure is posed in is peeling back, with the stitches coming loose, revealing a very mundane room with an outlet on the wall. This juxtaposition of neutral "art space" with a hint of "real space" behind it was really quite intriguing. In another work, she plays with space in a different way, juxtaposing the female form (artfully referencing Edouard Manet's Olympia) with a Macintosh desktop, complete with folders, icon dock, and Photoshop elements. Here, the virtual world of design clashes with an expressionist painting style, and again with a classic reference to fine art. I really appreciated this interesting exploration of space.

On the portable wall in the center of the gallery there was a sculptural piece by Kristin Melkin (I believe) that looked like white bones and shapes bending away from the wall. At first glance, it looked kind of cool (for lack of a better way of saying it), but upon getting closer I found the really amazing detail in the work. The shadows of the sculptures, reflected on the wall, were colored! It was almost impossible to see from the front, but the backs of the "bones" had been painted in green, blue, yellow, and red, and the reflected light from the room created a really beautiful colored aura in the space against the wall. Being able to hone in on, and execute this minute, nuanced artistic detail really struck me as being one of the most intelligent works in the show.

The large, high-res photographs on the right wall were astounding, and I was sorry to see that there was no label on the wall to indicate the artist. The artist had a series of photos in which the figures were flawlessly covered in black or white body paint and dynmically engaged in different activities-- posed with glossy black balloons, covered in a precise pattern of rounded rectangular white stickers, and being spattered with black drops of ink. The images were passionate, powerful and visually breathtaking. The high resolution of the camera work, the bold use of color, the vibrancy of the figures, and the careful attention to detail was nothing short of incredible.

There were some other works worth noting:

• Caitlyn Booth's panoramic landscape paintings were quite nice and did well to depict some quiet, alluring environments. They reminded me of the style and ambiance of Ed Hopper's famous Nighthawks painting.
  
• Erin Dunn's installation was interesting; I often fail to understand installations like this but I suppose it is meant to give us a glimpse into her life and her creative process. I am always excited to see someone exploring the field of animation at Mason Gross, given that there are nearly no classes that teach it, and I admire the work for that reason (and because I intend to have an animated element in my own exhibit).
  
• I enjoyed Summer Baldwin's various animal heads constructed out of cardboard, and then rendered through paint. There was something very amusing about these, and the "sketchy" aesthetic to the craft made it feel fun and inviting. I was impressed by the physical object of the moosehead, but also the attentive paint rendering of the other sculptures.
• Finally, the paintings of Eileen Behnke in the far corner room caught my eye. There was a definite graphic quality to the figurework that appeals to my own interest in comics and illustration. In her paintings, she includes subtle blues, purples, and reds into the color palette for rendering human skin, and it gives the figures a sort of surreal glow. To me, it did a good job of depicting her subjects in a way that called attention to the medium; the paint on canvas.

I was looking for works that relate to my ideas for my own thesis focus: pieces that had an element of sharing an experience using humor and interactivity. There were not a lot of examples, unfortunately, that did this: though there was an element interactivity in Erin Dunn's installation and some humor in Summer Baldwin's work. I plan to continue looking for examples of work I can draw on in developing my own Thesis Exhibit next spring.