Exhibition Reviews

November 29, 2011
Kim Russo: FAMILY / Cornell Fine Arts Museum / October 22 - January 17, 2011

     Kim Russo's most recent body of work, FAMILY, questions the stigma against nontraditional families. The drawings are the culmination of a process that includes spending time with gay and lesbian parents in their own homes. As a spectator who witnesses but doesn't contribute, she documents their private lives through photography and captures a certain level of intimacy not always made public. Although the drawings edit and ultimately limit the experience, they maintain a voyeur-like quality that, coupled with the directness of the large-scale and unframed paper, encourages personal interaction. The banality of the scenes forces the viewer to question its familiarity. Women washing dishes and people sitting down at a dinner table are hardly out of the ordinary. In fact, these environments don't differ at all from the standard American household. In this way, the drawings quietly rebel against those who would refuse marriage or adoption to a homosexual couple or reject it as abnormal. The near indistinguishability of the scenes prove that families with gay or lesbian parents are capable of providing an environment that is essentially the same, effectively voiding the argument that homosexual parents provide less stable conditions for raising children than heterosexual ones. With the exception of some remotely menacing objects which add an ominous undertone- an inflatable shark and a cop car parked seen through a window, there is nothing to which any parent could justifiably object to. In this graceful and indirect way, the drawings demand the viewer to reevaluate unsubstantiated assumptions about nontraditional families and redefine their ideas about the contemporary family.


November 12, 2011
Hugh Davies: Paintings / Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art Gallery / November 2 - November 26, 2011

     Hugh Davies' newest body of work, currently on display at the Allyn Gallup Gallery, walks the boundary between abstraction and representation.
     He begins each piece by sculpting three-dimensional forms from wrapping paper and similar materials. Photographs of the these forms are then transferred onto canvas and painted over with acrylic to edit them into their final shapes and create the composition. Oils are then applied to model the forms and complete the color.
     The result is a stunning work of precision that balances the abstractness of the forms with the finely detailed realism in the application of the paint. The low horizon lines and the immense desert-like environments have a surreal quality. Although the material they appear to be made form recalls machinery, the structures don't have an apparent function, which only adds to the intrigue and mystery inherent in each piece. But the most stunning aspect of all Hugh Davies' paintings, is the color. The gradients of pinks, purples, yellows, and blues are striking and beautiful in their own right.



November 7, 2011
Zimoun: Sculpting Sound / Ringling Museum / October 11 -  January 8, 2011

    Zimoun is a Swiss artist whose minimalist sculptures reevaluate the distinction between structure and chaos. His current exhibition at the Ringling Museum is the largest survey of his works yet. The space is partitioned into rooms that provide separation for the structures. Each piece is carefully assembled and site specific, but despite their precision, the structures evade any sense of cold exactness or remoteness. Instead, they present as animated organisms whose liveliness is emphasized by the production of simple movements and sounds. In his work, these elementary sounds take physical forms. The intangible becomes visual, allowing the complex creation and degeneration of patterns to be studied. Spinning wires form an animated wall of noise, cotton balls roll against cardboard, and lengths of cord wriggle like insects. The naturalistic sound and motion combined with the repetition of basic components recalls some kind of colony. The naturalism produced by the prepared mechanical motors also reveals an intricate series of relationships, where the distinction between the structure of the artificial and the chaos of the organic is questioned.
    Overall, some pieces were stronger than others. The selection of work presented at the Ringling could have been more diverse. Other less typical pieces that utilize materials outside of wire, cardboard, and cotton would have improved the show.
    Otherwise, the show was very successful. Zimoun's work defies conventions of both kinetic and minimalist sculpture in interesting and refreshing ways. Hopefully the Zimoun exhibition will signal the Ringling Museum's continued interest and incorporation of contemporary art.



August 27, 2011
Hanging in the Balance: Ten Emerging Chinese Artists / Selby Gallery / August 12 - September 17, 2011

    Hanging in the Balance showcases the work of ten young Chinese artists who studied under Professor Qin Jian. Qin Jian, who also curated the show, hopes that this selection of work will represent the new direction of Chinese contemporary art, where artists are more interested in examining themselves from the point-of-view of an individual autonomous being, rather than from the communist-derived perspective of the individual as part of a collective. In other words, creating art that focuses more on the "I," rather than the "we."
    The work included in the exhibition incorporates drawing, photography, installation, and video.  Cao Shumo's Tooth Plaque presents a series of detailed, microscopic photographs that shock viewers when they discover what they are looking at to be things picked from the artist's own teeth. For me, the piece was a clever way of commenting on the objectivity of our own realities.  I also found Zhifei Yang's performance based piece Day Dreams intriguing. The image of her asleep in various public spaces is beautiful in its vulnerability. The enormous white pillow and her white gown add to the surreal quality and highlight the juxtaposition of dreams with reality.
    Wei Na's Temple and Jia Zhixing's Living Space/ Performance Space, are also visually appealing and conceptually interesting. Still, I found some of the work to be underdeveloped and lacking in any direct meaning. For instance, Jin Jing's video Obsessing follows the artist as she goes about her normal activities of waking up, getting ready, and catching the bus to work. However, she fails to reinvent the familiarity of those activities or inspire any reexamination of them. With the exception of a moment when she attempts to climb a street sign, which seems awkwardly misplaced within the context of the video, nothing about the piece is unusual or stimulating in any way. Ultimately, it becomes a boring documentation of anybody's morning routine.
    Overall, I appreciated the opportunity to see contemporary Chinese art and to learn firsthand the artistic developments of a country with such a different cultural perspective.