2010 WLCM BCK SHOW

This past Friday I got the chance to walk around the Mason Gross WLCM BCK exhibition with 2^nd year MFA graduate, Caetlyn Booth. I was able to hear about all the challenges that came across during the curating and how successful it was to work in a group and put this show together. Working as a group, some of the things they had to prepare were, collecting, curating, and installing of the work, food & drinks, and setting up an auction of some pieces.

The works in the exhibition consisted of both grad students and faculty. Each artist was told there was no specific theme throughout the show, so many of the pieces didn’t work well together. The artists were simply told just to submit a small/medium piece yet some of the artists’ smaller pieces were huge compared to others. I choose 4 works from the show that I felt were extremely interesting to discuss in this weeks blog entry.

WLCM BCK

The first piece that caught my attention as soon as I walked in the room was Alan Prazniak’s, “Dreamgirl.” Set in the middle of the room on a pedestal, was a sculpture made from a puzzle and covered with oil paint. Not only does the puzzle alone have great texture, but the splattered oil paints also give the piece great dimension. I really enjoyed his use of bright colors and overall cheesiness of the cheap earrings placed in the hair of this Egyptian head. I felt this piece worked very well in the middle of the room because of Prazniak’s use of color with the other bright pieces throughout the room.

Next, I found Richard Tuttle & John Yao’s homemade book with poems to be a really fun, interactive part of the show. The piece entitled, “ The Missing Portrait” was illustrated by Tuttle and consisted of some of John Yao’s poems.  The typography along with the different shapes and mixed media really worked with this piece. The fact that this piece was interactive really drew me to it. It was very nice to be able to flip through these abstract and very unique pages. The placement of this piece bothered me because it was next to a hallway that led through to another showing room. I found that even though I was very into checking out the book, that the hallway was distracting.

The next piece that I really liked was Anna Bushman’s untitled, interactive wall sculpture. While the piece was very nauseating to look at, I couldn’t take my eyes away from it. Because the piece was marked as mixed media I don’t know the exact material used but the piece was of a mirror with some kind of metal, mesh, piece on top. Trying to look at yourself in the mirror made your eyes and brain go nuts. I also really liked how the mesh material cast shadows on the wall. Because this piece was in the same room as the book, I liked how the two interactive pieces worked together on opposite sides of the room.

My last and favorite piece of the show was Erin Dunn’s paintings entitled, “Whoops.” This three-piece installation was very interesting with its use of mixed media and some kind of resin coating the pieces and dripping to the floor. Dunn likes to bring things from her studio to interact with her pieces and I really liked this idea while looking at the piece. The way Dunn decided to leave the scuffmarks on the pedestal was a very bold decision but I felt it worked very well with her pieces.  The coral like shapes of the piece worked well with the other pieces in this smaller room. I also really liked that you could see this piece from the main viewing room because it was placed in the middle of one of the smaller ones.

A Thesis Interview With Artist, Lauren Morich

This week I got the chance to interview Lauren Morich, a senior at Mason Gross, the art school of Rutgers University. Lauren is a graphic design student who is talented in painting and mixed media. I had an opportunity to sit down with Lauren in her home/workspace and learn a little more about her.

Lauren Morich
Graphic Design

Berger – What’s your favorite medium to work in? You seem to have a wide variety of different works.

Morich – I actually really like to work with markers. Let me show you.

(Lauren pulls out a large plastic container full of colorful markers and says, “ I have a problem!” We both burst out laughing.)

Berger – So, who is your favorite artist?

Morich – I don’t have one. Haha is that bad? I have different phases of artists I like. At the moment I am really into the work of Iggy J. Nunez.

Berger – Do you relate your work to his at all?

Morich – His work is really mixed media – ish and that’s what I have in mind for my thesis.

Morich's mixed media 

Berger – Can you elaborate on some of these ideas you may have already for thesis?

Morich – Well, at this point I came up with the concept that one medium shouldn’t dominate the piece.

Berger – So what mediums do you plan on working in?

Morich – I started collecting tags from clothes. I have so many that its getting ridiculous. I started making mobiles and drawings incorporating these tags. I started thinking, what if the Mona Lisa was created in modern times and in more of a graphic medium. This got me questioning, should art be based on the medium or of what it actually is.

Berger – That’s a really interesting concept to come from clothing tags. How do you interpret yourself as an artist?

Morich – I don’t want my art to be bound by parameters that other people intreprete.

Berger – Your paintings look a lot like the marker drawings you showed me earlier. I see a big connection between the two.

Morich – Well, for this series I interpreted the seven deadly sins through painting. The painting on the wall is something I created based off one of the deadly sins, so there is definitely a connection between the two.

Morich's Seven Deadly Sins

Berger – Do you see any other themes or connections throughout your work?

Morich – When I work with markers I can see similarities in shapes and colors I choose.

Berger – Yes I agree and can totally see the similarities between your pieces. What is this?

Morich – For a class I recently took, we had to choose someone to follow on Twitter. I choose Oprah Winfrey. I then created a book of her more inspiring tweets and put it together for middle age women to have on their desk or library.

Berger – This is amazing! What made you choose to pick Oprah as your person to follow?

Morich – I wanted to pick someone people could relate to and many women see Oprah as a great role model.

Berger – I think it’s a great idea and I think many women would buy it!

Zimmerli Art Museum - Water

Review/ Critique:

The current exhibit at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Water, displays an interesting balance between literal and symbolic representations of water. The theme of water is interpreted through sculpture, painting, and mixed media. Whether it is a landscape of a river or a cube filled with distilled water droplets, the exhibition shows a wide variety of how water can be interpreted.  A strong aspect of this exhibition is the amount of different artists used.  From painters such as Milton Avery and Albert Bierstadt, to the photographs of Phyllis Galembo, water is interpreted in as many ways imaginable.

When you first walk down the stairs to the show, suspended from the ceiling is a large net filled with water bottles. This representation of water sets the tone for the exhibition you are about to enter. In the main viewing room, you see a strong pairing of many works of art. Diagonal from each other, are two sculptures both portraying strong characteristics of water. One, a plexiglass cube filled with distilled water droplets and the other, blown glass made to look like dewdrops on the floor. The two pieces nicely complement each other in the room, which is filled with other water related works. Walking through the other rooms I find that there are other works paired well together, such as a painting of the Hudson River and a sculpture of nails in the wall placed in the shape of the Hudson River. The two shapes of the vertical river compliment each other from across the room. In one of the rooms was a small cluster of about five paintings on the wall. This pairing of works did not work well together and was unflattering to the room entirely. The blue walls worked well with the overall theme of water also. I think that the show might have flowed better if all the frames on the works matched or if they didn’t have them at all. All the video art interpreted very literal meanings of water in general. The video taken from the back of a boat was very nauseating and I felt it did no justice to the show. While many works were as literal, if not more literal, I don’t think this piece belonged in the show.

On the whole, the exhibit demonstrated the theme of water very well. While it may not have been the artists’ intentions to be in an exhibit based around the theme of water, I feel the curator’s intentions worked well with the work shown.                                                                                                                

My Water Exhibition

April Gornik, Charente

twenty-eight block color woodcut

middle of room

Atul Bhalla, Immersions

cubes with water and cast sand

far left of room

Maya Lin, Dew Point

blown glass

top right corner of room

Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube

clear plexiglas and distilled water

bottom right corner of room

Statement: 

           The reason I decided to curate these pieces for my version of the Water exhibition is because I feel these pieces would flow well together and give a good representation of what the show is about. The three sculptures would complement the woodcut and look aesthetically nice in a room together. I choose these three sculptures to surround the woodcut because they all literally contain water or look like they do (the dewdrops).