UBC Faculty Show & MFA Grad Show
Sept. 16, 2011
Faculty Show - Only When the Shades of Night Begin to Gather
MFA Grad Show - Happy
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Faculty Show:
Gu Xiong - Synchronize I, II, III (2011)
Photos of an assembly of elementary schoolchildren in present-day China. The children are at morning exercise, spread out in an orderly grid, "synchronizing" their motions.
Shows an ordered society with small individual discrepancies. The children are not all in sync. We see some out of sync, some looking around. They all wear different clothes--a very different sight than earlier communist China society. Each child has about one arms-length of freedom to express him/herself, but not to be overly expressive or he/she will likely be singled out and punished. The message is direct, but not literal. The title is ironic and the piece is comical.
Barbara Zeigler - Touched by Fire (2011)
The fire could represent many things: life, civilization, energy. Paradox of fire vs. water--> the fire is in the water; the water actually is the fire.
Phil McCrum - Boys Club (2011)
Title implies the exclusivity of the male gender. Arms around each others shoulders, holding hands--it is homoerotic, "manly," stoic. Exposes the bonding intimacy of macho culture.
On the other hand, there is a strong feminine edge as well. The flannel draws connections to artworks that use textiles and "soft" materials, that in the past were used primarily in feminist artwork. In addition to the softness of the material, the word "boys," not "men," in the title suggests an immaturity, youthfulness, and softness of boyhood. Perhaps this intimacy of macho culture reveals a soft point in their hard bodies.
In relation to the public, the shirts are turned away from us, facing the wall. Again, this implies exclusivity. It is ironic, since the show itself is rather exclusive: intentionally because it appeals to an exclusive demographic, and unintentionally because the remote setting of the empty library excludes the show from public access. Thus, due to site, the show itself is further excluded from a public that is already excluded from the art world.
Dana Claxton - Zapa Lama (2006-2011)
Demonstrates the beauty of resistance, in terms of the power structure of the catholic church in the background, and its suppression of indigenous people who show resistance in the foreground. Again, in the second picture, the Dalai Lama, a symbol of liberation, floats transparent over the backdrop of power structures.
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MFA Show:
I found the chairs to be interesting. They refer to the Vienna Secession, who were concerned with the "total work of art." Buck-Morss also talks about this "total work of art" in relation to phantasmagoria. The chairs themselves are not phantasmagorical. Wagner's Gessammtkunstwerk (total artwork), which combined various "arts" to saturate the senses and immerse the viewer completely in the work, did so in a way that the viewer was passive and mere spectator. In the chairs, the only way that the viewer is actually immersed in the artwork, is if he/she chooses to sit in one of the chairs. In contrast with Wagner's complete artwork, the chairs act as a complete artwork only when they are functional. The viewer's role is active and participatory rather than passive, and by actually becoming part of the artwork, this action perhaps makes the artwork more whole than by any other means possible.