Blog Post
Rasa's Riverside Arts exhibition features South Asian-inspired multi-arts
by christopherporter
One component of the ongoing Rasa Festival can be seen through September 30 at the Riverside Arts Gallery in Ypsilanti. Riverside Arts Gallery’s lower-level space houses many large, vibrant, and gestural paintings, and geometric, mandala designs in ritualistic floor art known as rangoli, alpana, or kolam.
The show, Madhavi: Illusion’s Beer, which is a part of 2017’s Rasa Festival exhibitions, collectively focuses on the Navarasa (Nine Rasas). This can also be translated as “the nine moods,” which are various facets of Indian aesthetics. These facets include love/beauty, laughter, sorrow, anger, heroism/courage, terror/fear, disgust, surprise/wonder, and peace/tranquility.
Many of the works embody these various emotive aesthetics, ranging from the dramatic and insistent paintings by Sangchen Tsomo to the harmonic and tranquil geometry of Meena Khasnabis and Lydia Hannah. Christina Burch curated this exhibition, which includes regional and international artists.
Madhavi is defined as a “sweet intoxicating drink,” and a reference to bliss or union with the divine. Riverside Arts Gallery offers an explanation of the use of the term Madhavi, stating: “All the works in this exhibit are keys to seeing beyond the veil of illusion and entering the living experience of bliss intoxication with the divine. ... This path to Ultimate Reality is India’s most enduring legacy and greatest gift to the world.” Each artist engages with the experience of bliss in regard to the divine in varying capacities and through different means.
Meena Khasnabis, for example, practices a traditional art form from West Bengal, which she developed during her childhood in Bangalore, India. Throughout her career, Khasnabis has worked in a variety of media, including acrylic, sumi-e ink painting, watercolor, pencil, and ceramics. Her works in this exhibition are improvised mandala designs that are traditionally painted on the floor in front of houses or shrines in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. These include motifs from nature such as the “conch shell, butterfly, lotus, or other floral designs interlaced with geometric designs around a central point.”
By nature, these are ephemeral works of art, made with simple materials such as rice pasta. These temporary works are implemented to “draw down blessing and invoke higher energies of the divine to dwell within one’s abode.” These ritualistic paintings are often done on a daily basis, though recently the art has expanded beyond traditional media, and are now often made with paint, colored powders, and stickers. Khasnabis’ works in the exhibit, however, are not ephemeral in the traditional sense. Each of the four works hangs on the wall, appearing almost as a tapestry rather than a floor painting. These are made on handmade lokta paper with white acrylic paint and employ the combined geometric and natural motifs typical of ritualistic painting.
Lydia Hannah’s work is focused on contemporary styles of art originating in India such as Mughal and Rajasthani miniature painting, Walri painting, ceramic paintings, and portraits, as well as works with masks, theater, and set design. In addition, Hannah works with traditional forms of the ritualistic painting: She created on-site installations for the exhibition out of colored powders, one painted directly on the floor in white, which references the motifs used by Khasnabis in her four-part series. Hannah has also included a Walri stone, “Ekagrata,” meaning “single pointed.” The stone portrays figures with joined hands, representing “harmony, balance, connection, and integration.” Hannah was born in 1990 in Karnataka, India, and is employed by Sanskriti College of Visual and Performing Arts in South Karnataka, where she works with students, incorporating art therapy into her lessons.
The third artist represented is Sangchen Tsomo, who, according to her bio in the gallery, is a “Western-born Tantric Buddhist yogini who lives in lifetime retreat in West Ann Arbor.” In addition to her accomplishments in painting, which she began in 2012, Tsomo has worked with percussion, releasing three solo drum albums. The works featured in the show are portraits depicting “God-Intoxicated Saints of India"; some are “gurus or saints who have attained complete God Realization or Enlightenment,” while other works represent “Masts, who are so intoxicated with their longing and love for the Beloved that their behavior manifests in ways which seem odd or crazy to ordinary people.” Inspired by her own path to spiritual enlightenment, Tsomo is a self-taught painter who produces “uninhibited, uncontrived, spontaneous” work “unconcerned with convention.”
Furthermore, Tsomo’s choice of oil paint as a medium places these gurus within the “figurative tradition of the Western painting,” with stylistic references to artists such as Picasso, Alice Neel, and Francis Bacon. Tsomo’s works enliven the gallery space, including vibrant palettes and gestural line work that, while they may recall the tradition of Western painting, stands their own. The stylistic approach is painterly, abstract, and sweeping, gestural lines, to varying degrees. Additionally, her works are executed on varying canvas sizes; some appear more realistic or “finished” than others, giving the impression of a diverse group of characters and aesthetic goals that align with the goals of the exhibition.
Related:
➥ Shiva Effect: Rasa Festival's dance events will conjure the divine
➥ Dwelling on the Tongue: South Asian women poets at Literati
Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.
Rasa Festival's "Madhavi: Illusion’s Beer" runs through September 30 at Riverside Arts Gallery, 76 N. Huron St., Ypsilanti. Free. Visit rasafestival.org for the full Rasa Festival schedule.
Blog Post
Variety Show: STAMPS's alumni exhibition "Ambiguities/Innuendoes? Go Fish"
by christopherporter
The 2017 University of Michigan Alumni Exhibition Ambiguities/Innuendoes? Go Fish features an eclectic collection of alumni works that engage, in varying capacities, with the terms “ambiguity” and “innuendo.” The annual exhibition allows STAMPS alumni to show their work. This year, work represented over 70 years of alumni from 1955 to 2016. This year, the exhibition featured juror Brian Kennedy, the president, director, and CEO of the Toledo Museum of Art.
Photography, mixed media, painting, fiber arts, pencil, graphite, crayon, woodblock print, video, animation, and collage are among the media that can be found in the STAMPS Gallery through August 19. Over 65 unique works are on display, and with diverse approaches, the artists engage the exhibition's themes to their own ends. Numerous pieces engage with political questions, while others question gender, identity, and embodied experience. Some works are introspective, while others address broad questions. Many works engage with aesthetic and form, asking the viewer to question the ambiguity or innuendo of the art object rather than ideas associated with the object.
As the juror, Brian Kennedy selected three grand prize winners and 10 additional works received honorable mentions.
Grand Prize Recipients
➥ Cynthia Greig, Representation No. 65 (chromogenic print)
At first glance, Cynthia Greig’s photographic print does not appear to be a photograph at all. In her statement, she states that her images “examine the illusory nature of photographic truth and its correspondence to perceived reality.” This work is part of a larger series, Representations, which explores how everyday objects from the “recent past” can be employed in minimalistic compositions. These compositions not only address the ever-present question in photography, “Can a photography a purveyor of reality?” but simultaneously explore questions of abstraction, line, dimension, and illusion. Greig creates the images in this series by manipulating the objects before they are photographed, rather than through digital means. Greig states that through this process, her images facilitate the denial of “aesthetic expectations and assumptions” and “reveal the photograph as if seen for the first time.”
➥ Katie St. Clair, Swale (acrylic, collage, and an assortment of experimental techniques with dye, graphite, spray paint, gesso and rice paper on canvas)
Katie St. Clair’s Swale is a large-scale mixed-media work influenced by her time spent living on the West coast of Ireland. Inspired by the landscape, her works are meditations on geological formations, particularly rocks. She states: “I started painting by questioning what I knew of rocks as being heavy, inert, ancient, and lifeless, forgoing their likeness to capture their essence. A sense of dichotomy was building on the painting surface, that rocks could be simultaneously stationary yet seemingly fleeting, or indestructible yet delicate like a butterfly wing.”
The result of this experimentation is a beautiful, rich, multi-layered canvas.
➥ Alisa Yang, Please Come Again (video)
Alisa Yang’s video addresses controversial subject matter, looking into the lives of women in Japanese “love hotel.” The film consists of personal narratives from three generations of women that have been involved in the love hotels in Kyoto and Osaka, where the artist visited in 2015. Please Come Again won an award at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Grand Jury Prize/Golden Reel award for short documentary.
In her statement, Yang addresses the themes of the video, stating: “Exploring these spaces as a metaphor for the female body. Please come again is a poetic contemplation in one’s sexuality, femininity, and cultural identity. It represents an important departure from the traditional patriarchy, one that demands the role of women to ignore their own desires and pleasures in order to serve their husband, family, and society.”
In addition to the three grand prize recipients, 10 additional works received honorable mentions.
Honorable Mentions
➥ Zoë Widmer, Myself in a Series (photography)
The large photographic work by Zoë Widmer immediately caught my attention and became one of my favorite pieces in the show. It is a large-scale series of eight side-by-side photographs and features vibrant, colored backdrops that create a pastel rainbow from left to right. Her use of costume, props, and self-portraiture recalls the work of Cindy Sherman and the like. Additionally, the solid, colorful backdrops and subject matter recall early works by artist Catherine Opie.
Widmer included a brief description of the work: “My body is trans and therefore interpreted as unusual, interesting, and shameful. It is something I more often than not choose to hide. In these images I express myself through my body with an emphasis on showing it off.”
The artist dons various outfits and costumes in the images. The poses are dynamic and include humorous and playful connotations. Engaging in the tradition of self-portraiture, the artist challenges us to reconsider the conventional portrait and to reconsider what subjects viewers see in a gallery setting. Widmer states that the trans body is interpreted as unusual and interesting, which the images celebrate. However, the third suggestion that the trans body is shameful is challenged in these images, representing the body as a subject worth documenting, viewing, and celebrating.
The following nine works were also honored:
➥ Kelly Hartigan Goldstein, but…it’s a banana
➥ Lenea Howe, Norm Walker
➥ Leisa Rich, Disco Metastasis
➥ Robert Sedestrom, Chaulk Talk
➥ Michelle Sider, One the Side of the Road
➥ Mark Sisson, Portrait of Emma Shore: What Price Education?
➥ Russell Thayer, Wind Rapids
➥ Marjorie Tomchuk, Confluence II
➥ Robin Wilt, Fish & Unfish & still FIO
With such a variety of media and subjects, this is an exhibition to see before it ends on August 19!
Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.
"Ambiguities/Innuendos? Go Fish" is on display at the STAMPS Gallery, 201 S Division St, through August 19. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 12-7 pm.
Blog Post
Multimedia Meditations: Ann Arbor Women Artists 2017 Summer Juried Exhibit
by christopherporter
The 2017 Ann Arbor Women Artists Summer Juried Exhibit illustrates the diverse talent in the Ann Arbor area. Though the name implies this nonprofit organization features women artists only, by 2008 the group included 10 men. The volunteer-run organization is now open to all artists 18 and older. Today, this local art group has over 300 members. In this year’s annual AAWA Juried exhibition, 46 artists have their work on display. The works represented are executed in a variety of media, both 2D and 3D.
The gallery space, located in the basement of the Riverside Arts Center, is filled with an array of multimedia pieces. Works include sculptures made of assembled found objects, paintings, photographs, and mixed media. Many works focus on natural subjects such as flowers, landscapes, and trees. The overall feel of the space is serene, with a number of meditative works. Many paintings, drawings, and photographs represented midwestern landscapes, particularly those that included Michigan waterfronts. Within this broad category, however, “natural subject matter” artists diverge immensely in their approach, style, and overall mood. From painterly and impressionistic to photorealistic or abstract, there are numerous techniques represented in the gallery that did not disappoint. In addition to the numerous nature-related works, many of the most successful pieces in the show depicted human subjects in painted portraits.
This year, artist Valerie Allen served as juror. Allen serves as Curator at Studio 23 / The Arts Center in Bay City, Michigan. She also engages with many other arts-related institutions in Michigan, including Alden B. Dow Museum of Science, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Golden Artist Colors, as well as lecturing and teaching across the Midwest. Allen has also exhibited work nationally in many esteemed shows, including the Chicago Biennial.
For this exhibit, three works were honored with awards from first to third place.
First Place: Withstanding Time, Eva Antebi-Lerman, Oil on Canvas
Second Place: The Walker, Karen Gallup, Found Object Assemblage
Third Place: Aquarius, Barbara Wise, Oil
Four works received Honorable Mentions:
➥ Sticks, Linda Klenczar, Pastel
➥ Weisman Art Center, Mary Whiteside, Digital Photography
➥ Submersion in Loss, Eva Antebi-Lerman, Oil on Canvas
➥ Inside/Out, Paula Doe, Used Dryer Sheets, Thread, Button, Collage, Found Objects, Acrylic
Among my favorite works were multimedia sculptures made from found objects by artist Paula Doe. Three of her pieces stood on a pedestal near the gallery entrance, two of which feature miniature clothing made from dryer sheets. Her work Inside/Out received an honorable mention. These translucent, ghostly clothes hang in front of the monochrome backdrop, adorned with prints that contrast to the white, varicose, gauzy “fabric.”
In addition to the works already honored, one work will receive the People’s Choice Award at the end of the exhibit.
Make sure to visit Riverside Arts Center in Ypsilanti to vote for your favorite before the show ends August 12 (I know I did!).
Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.
Ann Arbor Women Artists 2017 Summer Juried Exhibit runs through August 12 at Riverside Arts Center, 76 N. Huron St., Ypsilanti. Gallery Hours: Thursday-Saturday 3-8 pm, Sunday 1:30-4 pm. Visit annarborwomenartists.org for more information.
Blog Post
UMMA's "Victors for Art: Michigan’s Alumni Collectors -- Part II: Abstraction" makes the private public
by christopherporter
University of Michigan Museum of Art’s recently opened Victors for Art: Michigan’s Alumni Collectors -- Part II: Abstraction is the second show in a two-part series that began in February with Part I: Figuration. The exhibition includes a wide range of art, from an Amish quilt by an unknown maker to modern and contemporary works by influential artists such as Pablo Picasso, Christo, Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg, Barbara Kruger, Jasper Johns, John Baldessari, and many more.
As the title suggests, the show consists of a diverse range of works collected by University of Michigan alumni. The contributors come from 70 years of graduating classes, displaying the long-standing, continuing impact of university alumni collectors on the global art world. UMMA states that the show “offers an unprecedented opportunity to view art that may have never been publicly displayed otherwise -- and most certainly, not all together.”
The eclectic works represent over 3,500 years of art making. The criteria for the show is simply “abstraction” and “alumni collections” lending to a unique approach in which a 5th-century Korean roof tile, a work by an Inuit master, and works by critically acclaimed contemporary artists are displayed side by side. Abstraction in this exhibition is approached in a variety of ways, from abstracting the human figure, abstracting color and form, or from taking an object out of its everyday environment (see the terracotta brick affixed to the wall by Robert Arneson) and isolating it in a gallery space.
UMMA describes the varied processes of abstraction in the works on their gallery wall, offering a concise explanation of the qualities of abstract art: “Many artists use elements from the world around us … but through diverse strategies of abstraction, they transform and distil these into patterns gestures and ideals, creating compelling visual experiences through line, form, and color.”
Many works in the exhibition focus on form, color, line. Yet others, such as Lorna Simpson's hand-colored photogravure Untitled (What Should Fit Here Is an Oblique Story About Absence), conceptualizes abstraction through the inclusion of representative imagery. The work consists of two images side by side. On the left, a piano with two “feet” and on the right, two women’s shoes. Though the objects represented are “real,” they are abstracted when placed together. The work creates a commentary about gender. Under the images, a line of text reads, “What should fit here is an oblique story about absence, but I can’t remember the short version.” The inclusion of hand-tinting recalls 19th-century photographic practices, and the style of shoe included in the image on the right suggests a long-gone era. Image and text combine within this work to investigate language’s impact on meaning making, particularly in relation to photography. As UMMA’s curators state on the gallery wall, “(S)eeing does not necessarily mean believing, but rather is set up in opposition to believing.”
Two different works commented further on abstraction and the nature of art objects through their inclusion of reflective surfaces. First, Liz Deschenes’ Untitled zoetrope, a pre-film animation device that created the illusion of motion when spun.
The second work that included a reflective surface is MASTER, a 2014 work by artist Jeremy Penn. This piece is made from “vintage erotica, spray paint, and mirror-finished stainless steel on panel.” The mirror-finished stainless steel is rectangular, with a black frame. In the center of the piece, the word “MASTER” is the only matte part of the image, and within the letters the artist has placed collaged “vintage erotica” from '40s, '50s, and '60s publications. This work is part of a larger series, Evolution & Ego, in which Penn explores the “sexual gaze” through the combination of the mirrored surface and the written text. Other works in the series are identical mirrored surfaces with words such as “Gaze,” “Hunt,” “Lust,” “Prey,” “Power,” “Evolve,” “Beast,” and “Tease.” Together and alone, the words chosen for this series provoke the viewer to consider the roles of power in sexual relationships. The word choice “Master” evokes an array of unsettling power dynamics. The experience of viewing this object presents the viewer with the option to imagine him/her/their self as a “Master.” This is perhaps one of the least unsettling options from the series. Would I want to stand in front of a mirrored surface with the word “Prey” emblazoned on it and imagine myself in that space? In this way, we become aware of the implications of the array of charged words Penn selects for his works.
This exhibition is filled with works that have until now been in private collections, offering a unique opportunity to see rare and unknown artworks by some of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most celebrated artists. Stay tuned for the site-specific installation that will extend into the Irving Stenn Jr. Family Gallery beginning August 19 and running through November 26. This exhibition will include Random International’s LED-light and motion-sensing sculpture Swarm Study / II.
Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.
"Victors for Art: Michigan’s Alumni Collectors -- Part II: Abstraction" runs through October 29 at UMMA's A. Alfred Taubman Gallery I. A calendar of events can be found on the UMMA website, with many exciting opportunities to participate in art-making workshops and gallery talks.
Blog Post
Deep in the Mix: REMIX & ReMIXED Reality at Ann Arbor Art Center
by christopherporter
REMIX, an exhibition at the Ann Arbor Art Center’s 117 Gallery, contains two exhibitions: one in the physical space of the gallery and one virtual. Described as an “augmented reality experience,” ReMIXED Reality was created by Andrew Rosinski and ICON Interactive.
In addition to the works of art hanging on the walls, visitors can download the custom virtual reality app, which can be found in your phone’s app store. The app creates a virtual gallery that is “superimposed” over the physical artworks on the gallery walls and can be viewed on your phone. Throughout the gallery are small symbols on the wall that can be scanned by the ReMIXED application to bring up an array of virtual works of art.
The virtual gallery includes imagery ranging from digitally made virtual paintings to photographs and kaleidoscopic views. Some of the pieces move with you as you move through the gallery space. Other symbols create a perspectival virtual space that extends behind the square, black symbol, or projects in front of it.
The inclusion of virtual reality works in art institutions is a trend being embraced more broadly in recent years. Two examples of highly praised virtual reality experiences are the Smithsonian’s WONDER, 360 and the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Lumin. Virtual reality has been implemented at numerous renowned museums, including Somerset House in London, and MoMA, with a current project developed by artist Martine Syms. (If you are interested in further reading about the history of virtual reality, beginning with the first stereoscope in 1838, the Franklin Institute gives an overview of the topic on their website.)
Though many of the works in REMIX embrace traditional media, they employ “new media” and virtuality in varying capacities. For example, Joshua Littlefield’s Overtake was created using manipulated negatives. In the photographic collage, the female subject’s body reclines. The inclusion of a cut-out image imposed over her face, however, disrupts the experience of viewing a photograph as a document of reality. The circular cut-out has a green hue that contrasts with the warm colors of the girl’s dress, while the continuity of the photograph is further unsettled by the inclusion of a strip of green film in the bottom quarter of the image.
Art Vandenberg’s Running Man is a series of images taken on the artist’s iPhone. This is part of a “walkabout” series in which the artist sought to gain inspiration from the moment, from NOW, as he writes in his artist statement. He asks, “If a symmetry in my life is walking, what value is conserved?” and then answers by stating, ”What is conserved in my life is NOW, this intersection of past and future possibilities.” Concerned with symmetry and the scientific ideas surrounding conservation of information, patterns, and geometry, Vandenberg explores what it means to make art with the awareness of the seemingly “inconsequential in the vastness of time space.” On his website, he describes this project as the Nth Derivative, defining it as such:
Nth-Derivatives seeks higher order derivatives of the function of being.
Art-making is a first derivative of the function of being.
Photo-documentation of art is a second derivative.
Processing photo-documentation into a photo montage explores higher order Nth derivatives.
Running Man depicts a structure of driftwood in the sand, repeated from slightly different perspectives in 30 frames, stacked on top of one another in a digital photo montage. This seemingly mundane composition is a commentary, then, on the documentation of art, which is, according to Vandenberg, a second derivative of the function of being.
This exhibition honored the following works with first through third place titles, as well as two honorable mentions:
Best in show: Melis Agabigum, The More I Step Into the Sun, the More You Step Out of the Light, copper, 24K gold
This piece is a large sculpture that snakes around the floor of the gallery. Admittedly, I almost stepped on the work as I attempted to immerse myself in the virtual gallery. I then noticed the piece: a dark twisting metal, with a gold piece separating the hanging portion of the work from the circular space it consumes on the floor. On the artist’s website, her work is described as "
This sculpture is tethered to the wall but winds itself into the floor space in a way that almost feels uncomfortable, making the viewer pause to consider why it is there and what it means, in addition to the relationship between the viewer’s body and the piece. The 24-karat-gold piece that disrupts the dark metal and leads to the circular portion resembles a heart, further emphasizing the connection of the work to physical and emotional themes. This piece is part of a body of work called Gaslight referencing the phenomenon of “gaslighting” and the impact this behavior has on recipients in abusive relationships. The installation employs shadows to urge the viewer to inspect the object, questioning where the sculpture ends and the shadows begin.
Second place: Ann Arbor artist Andreas Luescher, Fort Ancient, acrylic glass
Luescher is an architectural design instructor at Bowling Green State University and has authored numerous books in addition to his work as a conceptual artist. He specializes in “design processes in architecture, design and urban design from an aesthetic, social, public policy, sustainability and visual cultural perspective.” In his artist statement, Luescher states that his sculptural drawing mixes heterogeneous materials and techniques, a commentary on the “obsessive orderliness and sublime inventiveness” of his Swiss culture. This work examines “the structural, poetic and temporal classifications of the cultural hypothesis known as conceptual art.” Luescher often uses sketching and sculptural drawing to form the basis for larger projects, but these methods of creation simultaneously influence his process in creating conceptual art.
Third place: Kenneth Batista, Falling Water, acrylic on canvas
Kenneth Batista’s Falling Water is a painted derivative of a photograph, which the artist put into Photoshop to pixelate. Then, the Photoshopped image serves as inspiration for the painted piece. Batista said his painting is influenced by Impressionism, and through his work, he hopes to push the boundaries between realism and abstraction.
Batista also has a second work in the gallery, Cliffs of Moher. Each of these paintings is clearly based on a landscape, but if viewed from a close range, the individual squares of color become abstract. Then, if the viewer walks away from the painting, a representational image comes into view. These paintings, though they appear analog, are created with the assistance of technology. Additionally, the idea of the “pixelated” image relies on technology. Though artists such as Chuck Close have long employed the technique of painting abstract squares that come together in a whole image, Batista’s work does not include any additional imagery. Instead, it stays true to the idea of pixelation: a multitude of single-squared display elements that comprise a bitmap.
Honorable mention: Andy Mattern, Standard Size #7743, archival pigment print
Andy Mattern’s Standard Size is a series of photographic prints, each depicting boxes of analog and digital photo paper. The artist has removed all text and image from the compositions as a way of “neutralizing corporate examples of art.” Mattern’s work critiques and celebrates the medium of photography through this neutralization of the corporate aspect of photographic creation.
Honorable mention: Detroit-based artist Shaina Kasztelan, My Little Sleepover at the Gates of Hell, mixed media
Shaina Kasztelan’s work is colorful, busy, and self-described as a “maximalist conglomeration of used children’s toys” that were procured from second-hand shops, commercially mass-produced items, beauty products, and manufactured fabric. These elements are combined in her large collages that address themes of consumerism and mass production, particularly in relation to objects marketed toward women. Her work explores internet youth culture, feminism and identity, and consumer capitalism.
Also included in the exhibition are works by artists Joseph Bergman, Debbie Bogart, Dominique Chastenet de Gery, Alayna Coverly, Donald Cronkhite, Nicole Czapinski, Jason Ferguson, Sean Hottois, Douglas LaFerle, Paho Mann, Andy Malone, Stephen Proski, Thomas Stella, Jodi Stuart, and Xi Zhang.
Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.
REMIX is on display at the Ann Arbor Art Center, 117 W Liberty St., through July 22. The gallery is open Monday through Friday 10-7 pm, Saturdays 10-6 pm, and Sundays 12-5 pm. Free. See photos from the opening reception here. Click here to see which pieces are for sale.
Blog Post
"Reach: A Stamps Faculty Exhibition" is a rich and diverse collection of art
by christopherporter
In March of this year, University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art and Design opened the Stamps Gallery on the first floor of the McKinley Towne Centre, 201 S. Division. The new space offers an accessible art-viewing experience in downtown Ann Arbor and features large glass windows, which particularly impacted my viewing of the sculptural works on display by Anne Mondro as part of Reach: A Stamps Faculty Exhibition.
Her hanging sculptures, intricately constructed from tiny copper, silver, and bronze wires, represent various human hearts and anterior organs. Three hearts hang austerely in a row in the front of the gallery, which immediately drew my interest. I visited in the evening, on a sunny day, a perfect time to catch these sculptures illuminated by the setting sun.
These works illustrate Mondro’s interest in traditional craft and the human body. Applying the technique of crochet to thin wire, Mondro creates complex, sophisticated designs. The wire organs float just feet above the floor and appear ghostly in the large space. Though these were the first objects to catch my attention, there are 18 artists’ works on display, ranging from traditional drawing, found objects, textiles, a giant camera obscura that resembles a deer hunting blind, a mechanized brick grinder, and much more.
The exhibition features works by University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design faculty, illustrating a diverse range of artistic practice. The exhibition “brings together a cross-section of rigorous and research-based work” by faculty, who “wear multiple hats as educators, storytellers, artists, and designers.” These works engage with themes of contemporary art practice, the large show including pieces ranging from traditional media to interactive works.
One such interactive work is the installation by artists Stephanie Rowden and Jennifer Metsker. The Bird in the Breath and Other Hopeful Cargo features a two-wall “room” with egg-shell blue walls, a dark, wood chair and a hanging set of headphones. The chair is positioned beneath the headphones, inviting the viewer to sit in the space and listen to the recording playing through the speakers. If you choose to engage with the piece and listen to the headphones, a poem adapted from the works of Emily Dickinson plays on a loop. The wall text states, “This list-like poem reflects on the rich ephemera found in her poems -- the feathers, the shadows, the gown -- and imagines them being packed up shipped across time and space.” The listener can wear the headphones and sit peacefully against the blue-toned walls inscribed with white paint; words such as pearl, cloud, button, and bird reiterate the quotidian aesthetic in both the poetry and the installation space. This audio poem was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and is the second in a series of adaptations by the artists.
Three video works are also on display in the gallery, at times competing for air space. In a small, semi-secluded theater-style space in the back of the gallery, two short films by Nick Tobier explore street life. The films explore two different public locations and the interactions that take place there. The first video, Detroit Local, follows a group of marchers wielding various tools, which they use as instruments, through the streets of Detroit. The group, headed by a conductor, gathers members as they walk along sidewalks and down the centers of roads. The second video, set in Bangaluru, India, depicts a man playing trombone on a busy street. Passersby often neglect to acknowledge the man playing, or large vehicles drown out the sound. Tobier’s first video explores the result of the artist’s intervention in creating a public occurrence, while the second appears less staged, instead focusing on the bizarre everyday life of a musician in a loud, busy city.
The third video in the exhibition, Swallowed Whole, plays as a single-channel video on a mounted screen across the gallery. This film is abstract and fragmented, consisting of repeating scenes that suggest hospitals, ice, and claustrophobia. The experimental film was the recipient of 10 awards between 2014 and 2016, and Kumao’s website states it's about “surviving extreme isolation and physical limitations as the result of traumatic injury.” Intermittent crashing sounds and images of a broken spine emphasize the disorder and unrest portrayed in the film. Kumao explains that the technique is used “to both tell and disrupt the story
Each work in the gallery merited interest, with a very diverse collection of media, themes, and aesthetic. Michael Rodemer’s Rapprochement is a mechanized work that slowly rotates two red bricks. The bricks meet, grinding together, and shaving red dust onto a pedestal below. Rodemer describes his work as a “kinetic sculpture
Holly Hughes work, Bad Hombres and Nasty Women present Not My President’s Day, consisted of a computer monitor displaying three open tabs in the internet browser. Two tabs contained webpage articles, “Bad and Nasty” and “Holly Hughes strikes back at Trump’s defunding of the arts.” The third tab contained a Facebook image of hanging underwear, each with a pair of hands. These documents are part of Hughes’ Bad and Nasty project that sponsored Not My President’s Day in February 2017. The events took place in 64 cities, including Ann Arbor.
The gallery also features works by James Cogswell, Roland Graf, Osman Khan, Louis Marinaro, Rebekah Modrak, Robert Platt, Marianetta Porter, Sherri Smith, Bruce Tharp and Stephanie Tharp, and Joseph Trumpey and his students.
According to the gallery, we can look forward to future exhibitions highlighting the work of Stamps faculty, stating: “Reach is the first of a series of projects that will examine and highlight art, design and creative work produced by Stamps faculty in the years to come.”
Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.
Reach: A Stamps Faculty Exhibition is on display in the new Stamps Gallery, 201 S. Division, Ann Arbor, through July 8. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12-7 pm. A "Reach" reception will be held Friday, June 16, from 6-8 pm, and is free and open to the public.
Blog Post
Painted Drawings: Nora Venturelli's "Vice Versa" at WSG Gallery
by christopherporter
Nora Venturelli has maintained a significant interest in figure drawing and painting throughout her career, and specialized in studying the human form in college. Her work addresses themes of movement, shadow, and the body in its relation to interior thought processes. These concerns are evident in her most recent work on display at WSG Gallery in an exhibit titled Vice Versa, which runs through June 10. In addition to her series on the human figure, Venturelli has worked with a number of other subjects, including landscapes and still life.
Venturelli was born in Rosario, Argentina, and emigrated to California in 1968 after graduating high school. Today, she teaches both drawing and painting at Eastern Michigan University and University of Michigan STAMPS School of Art & Design, and lives in both the United States and Argentina. She is active in the arts community, showing her work locally and internationally.
The selected pieces for Vice Versa include large-scale mixed-media paintings of the human figure in motion, with gestural lines and overlapping forms suggesting the trajectory of the body through space. Line and color combine to examine the physical body’s relation to human emotion. Also on display are charcoal figure-study drawings that employ similar gestural yet controlled line work to suggest dynamism, even if the figures are seated. Venturelli’s choice to show drawings and paintings alongside one another illustrate her growing concern with an integrated artistic approach in her work.
In fact, Venturelli set out to find an intersection between the gestural and linear qualities of her drawings and the style she had employed in her paintings. To do this, she began to incorporate these techniques by drawing with paint. Venturelli writes, “My approach to drawing with paint was triggered a few years ago when I realized that my drawings and paintings were not integrated. … This initiated a progressive morphing of my drawings into paintings with the objective that my paintings manifest the same gestural and linear characteristics as my drawing, and vice versa.”
In some works, it is unclear whether we see the same figure repeated in space, or if there are various bodies moving, or standing, together. This can be seen in the work Vice Versa, No. 43. In this example, two of three figures remain ambiguous with abstracted faces and bodies.
Throughout her work, Venturelli creates transparency where the modeled figure overlaps gestural sketches, disrupting the continuity of form. This common theme of forms overlapping other, finished figures is executed expertly in the piece Vice Versa, No. 35. In this work, a single female clearly repeats across the 6-foot canvas. The woman strikes a pose, and Venturelli captures it from different angles, using dimension, color, gesture, and layers.
Venturelli writes that a goal of her work is to show “human dynamics -- how we move, communicate, interact, and display ourselves, exposing and suppressing the layers and intricacies of our character. In this extensive body of work I document the passages of time, the fleeting moment.” Many of the fleeting moments represented are still, pensive, and others capture the figure in dynamic motion, representing the subject dancing across the canvas.
Venturelli’s figurative work recalls ideas presented in early modernism, such as in works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, particularly Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2). The exploration of time and space also seems to reference early photographic studies in motion, such as those by Eadweard Muybridge in 1872. However, her work goes beyond the study of movement and time, and creates intimate portraits of her subjects, capturing varying facial expressions and emotions. These emotive subjects contrast to the ambiguous, unfinished figures that surround and overlap the realistically-rendered focal points of the works.
Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.
“Nora Venturelli: Vice Versa” runs through June 10 at WSG Gallery, 306 S. Main St. Exhibit hours are Tuesday-Wednesday, noon–6 pm; Thursday, noon to 9 pm; Friday and Saturday, noon-10 pm; and Sunday, noon–5 pm. For information, call 734-761-2287 or visit wsg-art.com/gallery.