Second Hallwalls Visit, Jesse Webber and Kara Tanaka

I enjoyed my first Hallwalls visit very much, so I was looking forward to seeing the space's new shows by Jesse Webber and Kara Tanaka. Even the exhibition's names, "You can't smoke in here Mr. Corbusier, you'll burn this mother down" and Pining Wind respectively, caught my attention. Unfortunately, unlike the last two artists I saw there, Andrew Reyes and Rodney Taylor, neither of the current artists' works connected with me. Nothing currently located in the gallery particularly moved me, though I did appreciate the layout of the gallery space, and thought it worked with with the two shows by leading the visitor in a circle.

Jesse Webber's silk screens of the old grain silos just didn't do anything for me. I looked at the show's descriptions on the Hallwalls website before I visited, and even that didn't open up any of the works for me. And, with this show, if one of these works didn't move you, none of them would. I understood his desire to represent a world that had once been so promising, and had now fallen into such a state of disrepair, but I still didn't love any of the works. I did kind of like the large, rust sculpture that confronts you as soon as you enter the space, maybe because I felt more of the artist's presence in it. I also noticed that the neon orange "explosions" accompanying the photographs varied in intensity, but the pattern or reason behind it never made itself clear. Usually I like repetition and similar forms in artwork, but this time I was just unimpressed.

Following the gallery space around, I found myself in a smaller gallery space, with a strange object in the center of the room, and an even stranger one attached to the wall. I approached the central object first, and after a few tries, figured out how to watch the slideshow movie within this "satellite." Maybe I would have appreciated it more if I was familiar with the story behind it, but as it was, I thought it was too slow-paced and I got kind of bored pretty quickly. I liked Tanaka's general idea, thought the connection between the satellite and the images set in space was unique, but I just could not get into it.

Gadgetry - Does technology take away from museum experiences?

I do not believe technology is a bad thing. I actually think it's a very good thing. However, I am hesitant to say that the new advances in technology are conducive to museum visits. Marjorie Schwarzer's article on museum gadgetry walks the reader through the different types to technological media offered by museums across the country. These "gadgets" range from simple audioguides, which have been around since the fifties, and new, high-tech PDA systems that include color copies of the artwork, as well as audio commentary, and even videos that accompany the piece of work in question. After reading the article, I believe that there are two types of technology as applied to museums - ones that encourage active visitor participation, and ones that allow visitors to be passive.

Active visitor participation includes ideas like the Philadelphia Museum of Art had when they recreated the Japanese bowl and scroll. Visitors were allowed to interact with these "priceless" pieces and to get a real feel for them. Even though visitors knew the objects were not the originals, the technology needed to create the glass projection system and the exact replica of the bowl was still appreciated. A similar example is the art gallery that set up a computer kiosk where visitors could rearrange the art exhibit and leave their own commentary. These uses of technology encourage the visitor to get involved, and to develop a new (and personal) appreciation for the art. These technologies do not tell people what to think about what they are seeing, and allows them to express their own creativities.

I hate audio guides. Maybe they're an odd thing to hate, but I do indeed hate them. I think they're distracting and annoying, and that they actually take away from a visitor's experience. That is just my personal opinion, but I would much rather read a hand-out or a wall label than have to fiddle with buttons, watch as my battery dies, etcetera. Also, I'd like to think that people can be left to their own devices long enough to make up their own appreciation for whatever it is they're looking at, instead of being told what to think about it. The new computer and PDA systems will only make these problems worse, in addition to distracting people to the point where they never actually *look* at the art, they simply remain focused on their palm pilots.

Towards the end of the article, Schwarzer says, "We know that people visit museums to socialize with their companions. Do hand-helds cut off this experience or enhance it?" My answer is that they completely cut off any interaction with fellow visitors. People get lost in their own worlds when listening to audioguides, and even without the visual aids in the new PDAs, they tend to not really watch where they're going, nor if they cut in front of someone who was already looking at a work of art. Also, it's nearly impossible to have an enjoyable experience at a museum if you have opted to not get an audioguide, and your companion has. My mom and I have visited several galleries together, and she swears by audioguides, and insists on relaying everything she was told from them to me. While I do admit that some information was interesting, more often I end up arguing with a point, or making a different comparison out of sheer frustration.

Hand-helds that only encourage a visitor's passive interaction do not enhance their visits to museums. Visitors are told what to think instead of coming to their own conclusion, and usually walk right by other masterpieces that were not granted a spot on a particular audio tour. Give me a handout, wall text, and a map any day.

Jozef Bajus, "The Combing Wave"

The Collector's Gallery at the Albright-Knox is the museum's version of a small art dealership. All the works in the Collector's Gallery are for sale, and some are even able to rent (though aside from impressing future parents-in-law, I don't see a huge point in "renting" a work of art for a price that is anywhere from 5%-10% of the work's price anyway). The gallery usually shows artists who are currently popular in NYC, or in the local WNY area. This time around, they are hosting a small exhibition of some recent works of Jozef Bajus, who is a professor over at Buff State. Bajus' main medium is paper, which he cuts and manipulates to create extremely interesting and intriguing works of art. Some of the works almost seemed like deconstructed origami.

For many of his works, Bajus creates his intended effect by layering sheets of paper. These sheets can be different colors, textures, etc, and usually they all have different forms cut out from the paper. It seemed as if Bajus' preferred "cut out" style was an oblong shape with pointed ends, almost like a surfboard. This shape repeated itself it many of the works shown at the Collector's Gallery. Once all of the desired layers are in place, you get a real sense of the beauty of the work that has been created. Two of my favorite pieces from the show actually formed a diptych, and were called "The Big Dipper" 1 and 2. They consisted of white sheets splattered with black paint, with more seemingly random cut outs. The overall effect almost looks like a layered Jackson Pollock. For these types of works, Bajus requires the observer to get up close and personal with the art - looking at these from a distance will not do any of the pieces justice.

My other favorite pieces in the show were a numbered sequence called "Summer Reading." For these, Bajus took entire books, and painstakingly folded each of the pages, sometimes in the same way, a few times in different ways. Sometimes he cut the pages, sometimes he left them whole. In the end, the books appeared to be mini origami sculptures. The technique reminded me of the way students in middle and high schools would fold the outdated pages of their school planners in various ways, and by the end of the year they would have a lot of (pretty) folded, multicolored paper. Bajus has taken that idea one step further and turned his books into real art.

As for the space itself, the Collector's Gallery is fairly cramped, but for this exhibit it forced you to view all of Bajus' works up close. There were a few tables that needed to be maneuvered around, and took a little away from the space, but all in all it was a quiet and cozy place to view some art which is actually available for purchase.



This work, entitled "Summer," gives you an idea of the depth and layers located in Bajus' work.

Dave Hickey on "Dealing"

To put it simply: Art and money are cultural fictions with no intrinsic value.

That quote really stood out to me as I was reading Dave Hickey's chapter on art dealing, from his book Air Guitar. When it comes to art, a work is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it, thus making the demand the commodity, instead of the artwork. How many times have we seen prices skyrocket because of a fad? Take Beanie Babies - they're basically stuffed animals, but for a brief period of time, some of those stuffed animals were selling for thousands and thousands of dollars due to limited supply. A few years later, people barely know what they are, let alone if they're worth anything. This same rule is applied to art - you have the opportunity to buy a piece when the artist is completely unknown, for possibly what can still be considered a high price, but a price that is probably less than half of what you'd pay if this said artist becomes famous. However, like Dave Hickey said, this can easily be a "bad bet" that will never pay off.

With the recent financial meltdowns and crises, it's becoming more and more apparent that our currency is only paper. What a dollar bought yesterday isn't what a dollar buys today. The paper itself has no intrinsic value, only a calculated value that is mutable at best. I liked that Hickey separated art and money - it makes it seem as if everything is more of a trade or a gamble than a sale. Both "trade" and "gamble" are more abstract ideas than "sale," and it makes sense that this idea would appeal to an art crowd (or at least an art crowd that professes a disinterest in All-American capitalism). Overall, I really enjoyed this chapter from Hickey's book. I appreciate his guts in leaving his literary graduate career (which he seems to have returned to, after all) and starting a small gallery. He never seemed to get cocky about his little space, and insisted that he was only making a living, not "making money." WIth the uncertain futures of previously stable careers staring us all in the face, this is probably a great philosophy to adhere to.

Big Orbit Gallery: "Red Hearts/Black Tongues" by David Mitchell

When we first pulled up to the entrance of the Big Orbit Gallery, I wasn't even really sure where to go. We managed to find the entrance which is located at the top of some very dilapidated-looking wooden steps, across from a larger-than-life plaster cast of a woman's body. The door was blacked out except for the name of the gallery and exhibit, and at first we opened the door to nearly complete darkness. There was music playing, but nearly no light. You could see the silhouettes of two cars, and upon walking further, that there were actually screens in the cars. The screens depicted a man and a woman, in each of the two cars, and they had tears digitally streaming down their faces. It was poignant and puzzling at the same time.

I had looked up the description of the exhibition before I came, so I knew David Mitchell's proposed project was to depict crashed cars and taxidermy deer. In the darkness, I couldn't see any deer, and it was a little eerie in the space - I was just hoping that they didn't fall out of the sky at the end of the 10 minute installation loop. It turns out that we had entered in nearly two minutes into the loop, so we were out of sync with the story. Watching from the beginning, you begin to comprehend a little more, and thus when the headlights on the cars go bright and the inner car screens go dark, you know what happened. The video at the back of the space was completely eerie, but at the same time, it wasn't scary. Seeing the two human figures prone inside the darkening heart was a little unsettling, but at the same time, it was also peaceful. I liked the way the actual installation heart (a raised platform on the floor) had lights that slowly got brighter, instead of blinding you all at once.

I thought that the deer and the humans were an interesting comparison - in the end, we're all just road kill, but what matters is finding someone you love. I didn't even mind the taxidermy deer as much as I thought I would. But I did think that I liked Mitchell's sketch for the space (shown below) better than the actual installation. If you're going to use deer as a symbol for roadkill, and you want to show the tenderness between them, do something like you did in the sketch. I thought standing them up, having their obviously plasticized tongues touching simply could have been done better. In the sketch, the deer are lying down and the moment is more tender. I felt like the postures of the humans in the video and the taxidermy deer in the actual instillation didn't add up.

Still, I liked it. You just need to watch it from the beginning to comprehend what the artist wanted to convey.

The JFK Assassination and Ant Farm's "Eternal Frame"

Even though my major is in Art History, I usually concern myself with the pre-1900 world. That being said, I have never taken an American history class besides the one I took my junior year of high school, and even then we didn't get past 1980. We only brushed on the JFK assassination, since my teacher decided to focus more on the cultural impact than anything else. I had heard of "the grassy knoll" but never really knew what it referred to, and I knew there were some conspiracy theories about Lee Harvey Oswald, but I couldn't name any. The entire decade that was the 1960s was such an upheaval in history - so many significant assassinations, and so much unrest in the country. I can only wonder if the world would be different today if JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, as well as others, hadn't been assassinated within five years of each other.

I finally had the chance to look up some of the history of the JFK assassination in Dallas, and I have to agree that some things simply don't add up. While I've never been big on conspiracy theories, I feel like the entire case/autopsy/later rulings were mishandled and are thus relatively open to interpretation. There were over 15 completely separate conspiracy theories on ONE website I looked at, and I'm sure there are many more. I found that I was intrigued by them, and had to give several of them credit. You always have to wonder if the Vice President really only accepts the ticket in the hopes that maybe one day they'll be the one in the Oval Office.

Americans have always been obsessed with media, to the point where one could argue that we are completely controlled by it. I think Ant Farm's "Eternal Frame" is a good example of how people use media to relive the past. These artists wanted to be a part of this chunk of history, and they brought all of the passersby in the area along with them. People were so touched that they didn't even seem to mind that two of the women in the procession were portrayed by men in drag!

I feel like I don't know enough about the event itself to make too much of a comment on it, and because of this I'm kind of unenthusiastically looking forward to seeing either the Zapruder film or the "Eternal Frame" in class. Looking forward to it because it's a part of history that irrevocably changed our country; unenthusiastically because I am not one for enjoying a particularly violent movie. Several of the writers in our readings remarked that they were haunted by the videos, especially the "Eternal Frame" which replays the same scene over and over again, until the viewer supposedly becomes numb and accepts it, and tries to get something more out of the imagery. I feel that if I watch something violent over and over again, the picture will just be even more rooted in my subconscious than it would be otherwise - think of something you've only seen once, and probably only at a glance, and how something that brief can stick with you (and maybe haunt you) for the rest of your life.

Review of Hallwalls: Rodney Taylor and Andrew Reyes Shows

I was so glad to finally have a chance to visit Hallwalls. I had been hearing about the space for a year, but for some reason I never managed to get downtown to see it. I was curious to see how the church had been renovated to the point that it could house a contemporary art gallery, and I was not disappointed. The new architecture is immediately apparent when you pull in the driveway and see the large glass-enclosed staircase dominating the back of the church.

Walking into the first floor, you are greeted with a space that reminded me most of the Buffalo Arts Studio - one room, set up with movable walls, and holding two completely different shows in each room. What was different about this space, though, was that it seemed that the walls were intentionally set up haphazardly, so you could glance the other exhibition through gaps in the walls. We went into Rodney Taylor's gallery first, and even though his images are rather dismal, (think blood-red tree growing out of the Capitol Building that is drowning in a sea of turbulent waters) I still really liked them. Even though the trees were dead or dying, falling apart, or being burned, I still thought they held a significant amount of power. Then, you get closer and realize that there are pencil sketches on several of the drawings. They add detail, and once again, they aren't particularly reassuring, but they add to the overall auras of the works.

I particularly loved how the works were executed, by layering paint so much that it chipped away and looked like real, peeling tree bark. It also continued to convey the sense of destruction and decay at work in his paintings. These are works on paper, and are attached to the wall only via push pin, which left some of the paper puckering out from the wall. It was a nice reminder that his trees were actually created on a material that would not exist without them.

Andrew Reyes' work was mostly photography, with two mixed media pieces thrown in. The handout from the gallery says that Reyes tries to heighten the mundane, but I didn't think that his photos were mundane at all. They all paid such careful attention to detail and to composition. The photograph of a man with the cauliflower eye was humorous, while the photo of the colorful flower doused in rain was beautiful. Reyes also includes text in some of his works, such as a picture of two birds sitting in a tree, with the caption, "do me a favor dave, shoot me if i'm still working this branch in five years." There were a few photos that I wasn't attracted to, but that's to be expected. Overall I thought it was a good show, and that both artists had something to offer me as a viewer.