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[Gallery Trip] ArtPrize Highlights

This October, Helicon members Mateusz Borowiecki, Olivia Kinker, and Janavi Goldblum took a day trip to the ArtPrize competition in Grand Rapids. Here are some insights from our intrepid voyagers, reporting back straight from the front line!

Kenneth Lum

Canadian, b. 1956

The Keypunch Operator, 2016

Archival ink on Japanese paper

Courtesy of the Artist

I loved this piece for its exploration of an idea that seems simultaneously obvious and strangely brilliant: the effect of typed fonts, and in particular strongly contrasting fonts, on one’s internal monologue when reading a piece of text. When speaking, we raise and lower our voices, insert dramatic pauses, add is special emphasis and otherwise color our words to bring life to our speech. Writing seeks to imitate that, with the use of commas, semicolons, bold, italics, dashes and so on--yet here we see a text that avoids most of that, drawing its vividness purely by constantly cycling through a wide variety of fonts. The technique brings energy and animation to the otherwise mundane story of a typist’s life that no amount of Times New Roman could have brought out. -- Mateusz Borowiecki

Hillerbrand+Magsamen

Higher Ground

Video

Link to watch: https://vimeo.com/158208079

This piece is a video made by the husband and wife team Stephen Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen. It begins with the artists and their children sitting and watching a rocket launch. Then the entire family begins building their own rocket ship with various items from their home. They simulate a take-off, flight, and landing.

I found it very endearing and engaging. Their construction of the ship was clever and ended up looking pretty real. The family was very serious throughout the entire thing. When I first walked up to the video in the museum, I thought that it was actual footage of a rocket launch. When I saw that it was just this quirky little family making a performance art piece I was intrigued enough to sit through all eight minutes. Maybe you will too! -- Olivia Kinker

Stacey Kirby

Bureau of Personal Belonging

Performance & installation

This work won the Juried Grand Prize for a reason. Kirby’s incredibly complex installation includes a series of rooms within the setting of an old-time office, The Bureau of Personal Belonging. As part of her project entitled VALIDnation, this installation allows people of all backgrounds and orientations to explore how they identify themselves. The attention to detail alone, from name plaques to office supplies to filing cabinets overflowing with administrative papers, is a huge draw for the audience. For Stacey Kirby, who is known for creating very specific installation sites for her politically motivated, interactive, and powerful performances, (especially around LBGTQIA+ rights) it’s so much more than an office. Although we weren’t able to see the actual performance, we did meander through the various rooms of the office, each with a different theme and objective.

My favorite room was entitled, The Civil Validation Department. In this room, participants fill out yellow identity cards by stamping them with identifiers such as: Lover, Queer, Pansexual, Bisexual, Married...etc. The office clerk then stamps every single identity card with a VALID stamp and all of the cards are hung on the four walls of the office. A room full of diverse, personal statements hung all together, all reading VALID, was an incredibly powerful scene to look at. I didn’t have my own identity card stamped, seeing others’ identities concretely and visually validated really spoke to me and it was by far, my favorite work at ArtPrize this year. -- Janavi Goldblum