Since I had to do a review of an art Gallery for my Colour and Concept course, I figured why the hell not post it. It shows I'm cultured, or some shit. Y'know, like yogurt.
After this, I'm sleeping the sleep of angels, on my bed of clouds and covered in a feather duvet for at least 12 hours. I'm not going to school tomorrow.
The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia.
The display they had going on was "Unterspiel" an exhibit from five different artists or group of artists from Vienna. MY interpretation of the entire exhibit, was largely based around emotional response.
The first exhibit shown was actually on the outside of the building. They had draped false hair, or fur, across the tops of the contemporary art gallery sign, and I found it interesting to see how the fur/hair had molded to the tops of the letters, and unless you knew what it said underneath the hair, you wouldn't know what the building was, or what the sign said. I suppose in a way it's them saying that you don't know what's underneath hair. (as in animals, even humans with long hair that covers their face.) and how it can be used as a way to hide from things. At least that's my interpretation.
I checked out was a video presentation in a dark room projecting a tour through the underground canals of Vienna. I found it fascinating to see the part of a city that probably isn't shown to many people, and it wasn't necessarily unpleasant to me, but more evoked my curiosity of seeing what would be around the next bend when he was maneuvering his boat around the corners, and down dark tunnels. Michel was saying that she felt more physical effects from viewing it, like smell, however, I found it evoked a very strong emotional response, (intense curiosity, the desire to be doing that myself, and at the same time, mild fear and apprehension, wondering what would happen to the guy in the boat, and what if he went down one of the canals that turned out to be dangerous) and almost no physical response.
The third display I looked at was an exhibit featuring an approximately 12 foot long, by 8 feet wide by two feet high large container of soil, a plywood coffin resting in the dirt, and a couple of shovels standing in the soil. Along the edge of the wooden container holding the soil, there was Polaroid photographs of people lying in the coffin. About 7 feet before the exhibit, and over to the right, There was a pair of televisions sitting facing slightly opposing angles. On one they had a video of the two artists removing soil from the top of the coffin, unscrewing the lid, and then helping a person out of the coffin, in essence they had been buried alive, in a sealed coffin, for approximately 5 to ten minutes. The other television screen was black a majority of the time, and the only thing that was happening was the sound of scraping. After about five minutes of watching, you saw light on the screen and you realized that this was the person inside of the coffin, holding a video camera, and recording the entire experience of being buried alive. This evoked a strong emotional response from me. I wouldn't mind being IN the coffin, BUT! I would NEVER actually be sealed in the coffin, have the lid screwed on, and then be buried underneath about 60 pounds of soil. The mere though makes me shiver in horror.
In the same room, there was a series of photographs, approximately 10 images of the same room, with the furniture rearranged in different ways, from the typical bedroom arrangement, to odd arrangements where the furniture was wrapped in sheets, and stacked on top. I found it interesting that in some of the pictures, the headboard was still attached to the wall, and the bed was leaning up on its end with it's underside facing the inside of the room.
The fourth exhibit was a video run on loop underneath the stairwell, of a woman whose behaviour was hard to distinguish between laughter, and hysterical crying. It evoked a sense of sympathy from me, as well as confusion. It's hard to draw the line between crying, and laughing so hard that you are crying.
The last exhibit I saw was the bathroom mirror, which was circular, the mirror had been smeared with an opaque, white skin-cream, (most likely a Nivea type product, we touched the very edge, where it had gone onto the wall to see if it was toothpaste, or noxema, to smell the stuff. I think what the artist was alluding to was the human obsession with superficiality, and the desire to look as best as possible. By smearing the mirror with this cream until no reflection was visible, it made the need to cover your skin with moisturizer a moot issue. The concept behind this particular exhibit made me smile.
All in all I find that I have a difficult time "reviewing" modern contemporary art. The concepts behind them, unless stated to the person viewing the exhibit leave it up to so much interpretation that it's difficult to come to a conclusion. I'm more a person that takes things literally when they are placed in front of me.
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Now, If you want my NOT so professional response to this (since this was emailed to a teacher about five seconds ago) Here's the Dilly-yo. I effing well HATE Modern, contemporary, interpretational art. I have my reasons, and they are simple. Like I wrote in my review, I'm a literal person. I don't fucking KNOW what these guys are trying to say. The whole point of art, to me, is to express a personal view on something, and while I found these exhibits interesting, (Make no mistake, The concepts behind them were neat.) the lack of explanation left me frustrated as hell. I don't know what these dudes were trying to say. What the hell WERE they trying to say? I deliberately left out part of the exhibit, for fear of actually writing my honest opinion on it, about a trailer outside of the museum, that had shit painted all over it, that *apparently* had been used to sell hot dogs, or something stupid like that, in Vienna somewhere. There was a little T.V. in there, with the sound on full blast, but you couldn't hear the damned thing, since it was screaming hot out, and i didn't feel like burning my ear off by pressing it against the outside wall of the trailer.
Oh. I almost forgot. I went to see this with two classmates, Nick (Otherwise known as "Nick the Nineteen", and Michel. All three of us were piqued by the coffin exhibit, and with the polariods all over the edge of the ledge, and the step to get into the exhibit still there, we thought it was interactive. Nick had brought his digital camera along with him, and Michel and I dared (how mature, eh?) Nick to lie down in the coffin, while I snapped a picture or twelve. He agreed, She held his backpack, and I jumped up into the exhibit to take the photos.
We got one pic of him lying like he was dead, with his arms crossed over his chest, and another where he's doing a pose like a zombie, sitting up out of the coffin with a grimace on his face, before the dude in charge of the front desk came to the back and gave us hell for touching an exhibit that was apparently, NOT interactive. It's a giant fucking box of dirt and a cheap plywood coffin with a two dollar polyester pillow in it, man. We're not going to ruin the display. Lo'd Almighty.
Shouldn't they have SIGNS indicating that the exhibits aren't to be touched? Weren't we just interpreting the art in our own way? See! This is why I hate modern, contemporary, interpretational art.
M'eh. Whatever.
I'm going to bed.
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