Placelessness

Placelessness is a very interesting installation that is currently set up at University Galleries in Normal, Illinois.  This installation is far from normal, but at the same time resonates with the viewer to recall past experiences of home, friends, and family.  The artist behind this installation is Sarah Rothberg.  She has created two environments.  One of the physical that can be seen from just walking in the room, and one of psychological.  The nook in University Galleries houses a vibrant red shag carpet, a chair, virtual reality headset, headphones, and computer.  The room screams an environment that Austin Powers might inhabit, or maybe a scene from Pink Floyd's: The Wall.  

Sarah Rothberg, Memory/Place: My House, 2014-2015. Virtual reality enviroment, Oculus Rift headset, swivel chair, CRT television monitor, carpet. Courtesy of the artist. Taken from University Galleries web page.  

While the room disorients it still offers a sense of comfort, primarily with the chair. It has the feel of something that my Grandfather used to reside in during our visits.  Broken in, but not broken.  The computer is also nostalgic, but maybe thats because of my age and how we used to have them in our computer labs in elementary school.  Upon entering the virtual reality aspect of this installation you are confronted with lucidity as well as disorientation.  The environment is something new in itself, but there is a familiarity to the imagery provided.  Especially while inside of the house.  It has a feel of family and friends that can be related to.  Also the fact that you navigate where you go inside of the headset is intriguing too because you are exploring this place in a standstill.  It consumes you and I feel that is what adds to the disorient.  While i was "under" you could look all over the landscape and it went on for what seemed forever while in reality I was in this confined space. It was compelling to explore my perceptions while going in and out of what was made to be our reality.

The Quickening

The Quickening 15
Serigraphy, woodcut, mixed media

I visited the Mclean County Art Center to view Lisa Lofgren's exhibition called 'The Quickening".  They are primarily prints with some mixed media.  The collective is centered around child bearing.  This idea of fostering life is translated into these images in a compelling way that has an uncertainty to them.  These were all collaborative works with students at Middle Tennessee University.  Incorporating fountains, pedestals, flower pots, and livestock are topics involved in various prints while other remain more ambiguous.  In the backgrounds there is branching or extensions of line that speak to expansion.  Expansion to the self, family, and maybe more literally the baby bump. The colors work together very well and have good contrast. This creates a sense of depth that brings the viewer in for further investigation.

The Quickening 3
Serigraphy, woodcut, monotype, mixed media

 Much of this flows together, but there are some aspects that are questionable in related content.  I do not understand the incorporation of Japanese style and imagery.  She states it is because she is learning Japanese, but i do not see the relation to child birth.  Besides the very distinct imagery it is hard to relate some of these things to Lisa's content.  This could be because it was created in the form of collaboration, but it just seems like these different forms of imagery were slapped together and given a main theme.  There are obviously connections, but i feel this exhibition could have been more true to this and maybe in turn could have been more successful.   This is said to play to physical and emotional aspects of bearing a child.  Although i do not know the feats of bearing a child my guess is that most of the students that collaborated with this do not either.  I could be wrong, but it is hard to say that these are genuine psychological and physical interpretations to bearing a child.  I do think that the majority of these works do work very well together compositionally, but i do think some are a bit of a stretch to the supposed content.

The Quickening 9
Serigraphy, monotype, mixed media

The Quickening 11
Serigraphy, stamping, mixed media

The Quickening 12
Serigraphy, mixed media

Rob Swainston: A formal analysis

I was able to visit  Rob Swainston's show, "We thought they thought what we thought, but they didn't", and it was compelling to say the least.  This was a part of University Galleries in Normal, Illinois.  What a quaint town.  I would like to focus my attention towards a grouping of images on one of the gallery walls.  These images were green, red and blue.  All of the different colored images all had the color black in common.  The combination of green, red, and blue is significant because it is an additive color model in which these colors mixed are able to create a wide array of colors.  These pieces have an eerie and captivating essence to them.  They are fairly large across one of the larger gallery walls and they simply consume you and demand your attention. There are a total of four on this wall.  Two of them remind me of an aerial landscape viewpoint.  Something out of a militaristic video of scanning with thermal vision to find out the enemy.  But you don’t know the enemy and you don’t know why or what you are looking for.  It’s not confusion, it’s just not declarative.  The other two are similar but instead of an aerial view it is a view from below and far away.  Possibly old ruins of some sort.  Something you might see inside a Tomb Raider game.  You can scan through these prints over and over and yet when you come back to them you can see something different.  It gives you a very vague storyline that gives you a healthy number of outcomes and leaves it to you to put it together.  There seems like there are several historic references but there is nothing solid to make you sure of yourself.  This is refreshing because the outcome is different depending on the viewer and their own perspective.  The technique behind the construction of these prints supplements its content as well.  These are all made from the tradition of woodcuts, a method for printmaking.  Although it is the oldest method of printmaking this is a very contemporary take on achieving a finished result.  All of the woodblocks were cut out using a CNC machine.  This is putting a twist on tradition and using these ambiguous prints to project forward and create an experience all of their own.  With so much information thanks to the CNC machine, it gives us so many possibilities to let our minds wander and create a narrative to go with them.  Even the images that are the same but just composed with different colors have their own separate story to tell.