On Saturday, I ended up at this art exhibit on St. Marks Place. The artist currently being shown is Yu Honglei, who is a part of a recent installation called “New Directions”, which is a series of solo shows curated by emerging artists from China. This project aims to highlight the complexity and richness of new, emerging art specifically from China. Their video, 15′36′’, consisted of a series of repetitive shorter clips, of people on boats, plants in the wind, or American GIs with camouflage paint smeared across their faces, paired with bright flashing lights that make your eyes hurt. Without the editing and the music, these clips would be seen as just boring videos, but their use of editing and the carefully picked choice of music added a much more tense, ominous, “whats going on?” type of feel to the 15 minute long video. Seeing this exhibit, I thought it was very interesting to see how art today can really be anything- the definition of art has expanded so much over the past couple decades, and is now all about ones self-expression. It really inspired me to not conform to the “rules” of being an artist/photographer, and to produce work that I feel expresses me and what I find important/interesting in new and unconventional ways.
-Michaela
