21c Museum: Modern Art Manifested

21c Museum and Hotel in Louisville Ky is a modern art museum that is on the bleeding edge of the art world. At the time of this writing their walls are adorned with some breathtaking works from a diverse selection of artists. The vibe and atmosphere of the museum screams contemporary, modern, classy. With works on exhibit from artists such as the armed and deadly sculptures from Al Farrow,  Kehinde Wiley’s Africanization of European old masters, the engineering feats of Humans Since Clock Clock, Miguel Angel Rojas’s hyper real depictions of Michelangelo's David, Mohau Modisakeng’s dangerous and human self portraits, Fabiano Parsi’s perspective bending photography. The works I’ll cover here in this exhibition review are just a small part of the excellence the 21c Museum has on display. I hope if anything to entice you to check this fantastic facility out for yourself.

Al Farrow: Wrath and Reverence

21c is a very fascinating place. There are two main entrances to the building, one for the restaurant and bar and another that leads to the hotel front desk and the gallery. Although I won’t cover it much here the bar and restaurant are worth visiting as they have immortalized various people in their waitstaff in artworks which hang on the walls. Very interesting interaction between the art and the subjects of these artworks as they are on the wall and physically accessible while you dine or drink. I won't talk much more about that here but be sure to make it a point to experience this unique arrangement. The main focus of this review however, begins at the main entrance to the hotel/gallery where a doorman is waiting to greet you and answer any questions you may have. Front and center through the double doors the gallery unfolds. On open display is ”Wrath and Reverence”, a collection of architectural sculptures by artist Al Farrow. Farrow’s work consists of meticulously crafted religious structures, made from materials such as deconstructed guns, bullets, bone, glass and steel. The structures include highly detailed sculptures of churches, synagogues, mosques and mausoleums all crafted with tools of war.Farrow attempts to link the destruction of cultural heritage to human loss.

InterVentions: Re-framing the Printed Image - Curatorial Excellence at MAPC

The 2016 Mid America Print Council (MAPC) Conference: Print Matters, Printing Matters was held in Louisville Ky over the weekend. It brought print makers and educators from around the Midwest to teach workshops and share their work. Today’s review covers “InterVentions: Re-framing the Printed Image”, an exhibition curated by Susanna Crum, Assistant Professor of Fine Arts, Printmaking at Indiana university Southeast. Crums selections, as proposed in the exhibition statement, show how artists have appropriated, intervened upon and reinvented the printed image to reveal new interpretation of their impact and agency in our times. The works I will be reviewing speak to this notion of reinvention and re-evaluation of the printed image.

Kara Walker’s Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta

Winds of Smoke and Water

The Barr Gallery at Indiana University Southeast featured Deborah Maris Lader for the Mid America Print Council Conference which ran from October 5^th-8^th. Vader was recognized as an MAPC Outstanding Printmaker and is the founder of the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative.  Her exhibition was titled ‘Against All Odds’ and featured etchings with chine colle’, screen prints and wood cuts.  Deborah Maris Lader’s  collection features imagery depicting small girls, large birds, hands and trees throughout the body of her work.  She explores a whimsical landscape that is filled with distortions of reality that create a surreal narrative full of fantastic creatures. 

In her piece, Winds of Smoke and Water (etching with chine collé), she depicts the distorted figure of a girl. Her torso elongates into that of a tree, her legs root beneath the ground. Her hair is streaming behind her and red wings have sprouted from her back as she holds a torch in her hand.  From the look on her face and her body position she is trying o scare off the large bird-like creature before her. There are legs running above the girl and the gust of wind turns into hands moving through the trees behind her. The images of the girl and the birds are ones that are used throughout her prints but the symbols are especially dark and ominous in this piece. The movement of the hands around her body and through the trees, around the bird, leads the eye through the landscape. The fingers pulling at her hair, the running legs and her facial expression create a sense of dread, a need to escape. The quality of her drawings, child like at times with great variations in value, emphasizes the base, childlike fear. As if a bed time story has gone horribly wrong.  This foreboding is what made this piece so successful, it is almost magnetic.

In comparison her work, Lori’s Dove (woodcut), deals with lighter subject matter. Two hands hold a cord upon which a dove is perched, another  below is open and the lines of the hands extend into roots that expand upon the entire bottom of the work. Above more birds sit on a wire above a leaf bare tree from which a rope swing hangs. The symbols lead to a feeling of support and uplifting, as the wires hold up the birds. The hand is open to the viewer.  The quality of the wood cuts also gives a certain roundness to the details of the image, which seem more welcoming that harsh lines.

The work of Deborah Maris Lader in Against All Odds is breathtakingly surreal and depicts scenes of child-like wonder in visual narratives.  Her work is a wonderful exploration of personal symbolism and the psychological.

- Amelia Wise

Among the Birds: A Series of Whimsy and Danger

Images of the inner body entwine with the surreal, whimsical figures in printmaker Deborah Maris Lader’s MAPC print exhibition entitled Against All Odds. Lader primarily employs printmaking methods of etching and lithography to sculpt her series, mirroring the storybook, illustrative quality of whimsical characters. The overall effect of Against All Odds is that of a strong, whimsical narrative with a dark undercurrent in its imagery. The impression of a fairytale or children’s nursery rhyme is apparent in many pieces especially due to the surreal, character quality of the animal and human figures.

            The value of narrative in this series is heavy, producing image after image that tells a complex, strange story. Symbolism and thematic morality play together in whimsical scenes of odd behavior and playful arrangements of characters. Recurring imagery consists of birds, hands, tree branches, swings and other childish activities, roots, blood vessels, and varying forms of connectedness.

            The strongest recurring motif that dominates the theme of the exhibited body of work is that of birds. Most prints in the exhibition featured some form of bird, often mixed with human anatomy or behavior. The fantastical quality of the birds mixed into other forms and objects implies their intelligence and character beyond simply existing as an animal. Even the realistically rendered birds accompanied by no acts of whimsy can contribute to a “storybook,” fantasy feeling. An image that came to mind, especially in conjunction with the overarching idea of narrative, is that of a nursery rhyme, beckoning back to tales of Mother Goose. Birds in themselves can also symbolize freedom, communication, and spiritual connectedness to the sky. Other symbols included that arise from their association with birds are cages, flight, water, sky, and nature. A caged bird is a juxtapositioned metaphor, capturing something that is meant to be free. Water, sky, nature, and flight are all also potentially spiritual in essence.

            Elements of human anatomy imply intelligence, purpose, and emotional complexity. The print entitled Uprooted, 2012 (fig. 1) plays with a domestic sense of romantic togetherness or sorrow. A bird creature with a protective, ambiguously male appearance cradles a softer female bird-woman in his lap, holding her with his highly human hands. She lies against him with closed eyes, her bent legs giving way to the image of human ones. The anthropomorphic birds are transformed into human figures embracing languidly inside their underground “home,” while a third humanized avian figure releases a flock of silhouetted birds into the sky from the confines of what appears to be a cardboard box above. The sky is dark and patchy, perhaps ominous and implying the dangers of the realm outside of the domestic space. The hallow in which they dwell is cushioned by a tangled bed of roots below, perhaps representative of familial strength. The title Uprooted gives a diasporic sense of displacement of the family, and the encased image of the underground hallow could also be viewed as a place of hiding and protection.

            The mood of the images is sweet even while depicting things that are strange. All similar and contrasting ideas are thoroughly mixed both by merging them together as well as by being symbolized in the twisted branches and anatomy that literally tangle together. There is chaos but there is also peace. Childish abandon is met with hints of a real, adult sense of danger. Chords of sympathy are stricken, and humanity is touched upon with the help of the odd avian figures.

Figure 1: Uprooted. Lithograph with hand coloring. 2012 Deborah Maris Lader.

- Holly Gavin

Prints on Display at Carnegie Center for Art & History

The Mid America Print Council (MAPC) held its annual conference in New Albany, Indiana this year. Hundreds of artists traveled from all over the country for events, shows, workshops and portfolio reviews. As part of the MAPC, The Carnegie Center for Art & History put together a collection of excellent prints. Brian Jones, a local artist and retired Indiana University Southeast printmaking professor curated the exhibit. The show is a combination of different artists, styles, and print techniques. With such a wide variety of art, there truly is something that every viewer would enjoy to look at.

Fig. 1. Adam Rake, The Guanlan Twins

            In gallery one lies the Adam Rake print entitled The Guanlan Twins (Figure 1). This piece, while muted in color, jumps off of the wall into the eyes of the viewer. Rake, who received his MFA from Indiana University, has had work exhibited all over the country. His special skills include being trained in the arts of lithography, intaglio, monotype, letterpress, bookbinding, papermaking, silkscreen, and relief printing including traditional, contemporary, and photographic art. The knowledge of these skills is shown in this piece. The twins are confrontational to the viewer, but in a passive way. The figures look straight out to the viewer while holding natural objects such as flowers and leaves. The figures are going in and out of transparency in a way that makes the viewer wonder where one twin ends and where the other begins. This lack of opaque line results in the twins looking almost as one. The girls have similar features to a point where they look related, but enough unique features to make the viewer aware that these are individuals and not mirror images of one person. While the twins are holding natural materials and clothed in ethereal colors, they have a look that projects melancholy. Rake is able to create an intriguing environment that entices each passerby.

Fig. 2. Endi Poskovic, I was Born into These Lands (Zlatan) 2016

The Endi Poskovic woodcut in gallery two is entitled I was Born into These Lands (Zlatan) (Figure 2). Poskovic has been educated in Norway, Yugoslavia, and United States. His prints have been exhibited worldwide. This print was awarded Best of Show. The 2016 piece includes four colors that were individually printed on four plates. Poskovic utilizes oil-based inks on Kozo-shi. Kozo-shi is a type of Japanese paper used primarily in printmaking. The piece seems pays homage to Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Tower of Babel (Figure 3). Poskovic’s print includes the upward spiral of the winding tower similar to Bruegel’s 1563 painting. Both pieces include similar imagery with the tower, although Poskovic’s piece uses fewer colors and stronger lines.

Fig. 3. Pieter Brughel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563

This exhibit was a treat to view and is worth the time to see.  Any New Albany or traveling art lover would enjoy this exhibit. The curators made sure to include a piece catering to every artist’s style while maintaining a cohesive show.

Exhibition view

- Brooke Wessel 

                                                                                             

Carnegie Center for Art & History and the Barr Gallery

During the week of MAPC there was much to do, lots to see, and action was everywhere. You couldn’t even walk down a hallway without seeing a print nor could anyone deny viewing all the gallery exhibitions. Two in particular were the Carnegie Center for Art & History in New Albany IN, and the Barr Gallery in the Ogle Center Lobby at Indiana University Southeast, New Albany IN. The Carnegie held the Mid America Print Council Juried Exhibition while the Barr Gallery held the work of an individual artist also a part of MAPC. Understanding that they were two opposite forms of gallery showings, one attempted to keep one’s thoughts and questions about each showing on neutral ground. However, one could easily find a gallery more professional than the other.

During the Carnegie’s showing there were several beautiful works with various forms of breadth. It was pleasing to the eye to see art hanging from the ceiling as well as various forms of art on the wall and resting on pedestals. One could easily say that they were more attracted to the hanging paper art from the ceiling. The two paper art pieces were in the form of a bird or prehistoric creature in flight. The information about the artist and title of the work was not found, which made the experience less enjoyable. The exhibit was juried by a few professional superiors, although this exhibit was deemed to be less professional when compared to the Barr Gallery. The range and diversity of art is what made this experience most appealing, but it seemed that a few things could have been handled differently. For one, you couldn’t figure out the theme of the exhibit nor could you locate the information card labeling the title and the details about the showing. Either the stock had run out by the time I got there or there wasn’t any at all, it seemed that this could have been avoided by more planning. During the end of the exhibit an announcement was made that seemed somewhat rude. In short the male announcer told us that the exhibit was over and to go look at the other galleries. One did not hear a “thank you for attending,” or “enjoy the rest of your evening,” sentence in the announcement. While I’m sure it was not intended to come off as rude the tone was certainly not attractive. No one felt comfort in being “kicked out” of the gallery, which is why the ambiance of the second exhibit in the Barr Gallery was preferred.

Gallery at the Carnegie

The Barr Gallery’s exhibit of Deborah Maris Laders work also had a range of prints from etching, lithography, screen printing, and relief. Definitely not as diverse as the other exhibit, but also taking into consideration that this is a show for one artist not several. One did not find the work to be as appealing as the others because  the work was all too similar. It is good to have an overall idea behind the array of work that you are presenting because they all need to have a link between them, but this gallery overwhelmed me with repetition. One piece that stood out more than the others was an etching titled On Thin Ice. The piece was black and white and had a bird and several hands wrapped around almost in a suffocating manner. The idea was relative to the work and almost funny because the bird was not only being suffocated but also skating.  The theme and the information card along with Lader's personal business card was easily accessible. The presentation was also more formal with the artist presenting a small speech about the work. It would’ve been appreciated to have the organizers behind the Carnegie's exhibit also make a short speech as well, but sadly none was given.

Overall, I truly enjoyed attending the exhibits and found likes and dislikes about both. I decided to deem the Barr Gallery as the more professional exhibit because of its presentation, presence of an information card, and noticeable theme. I deemed the Carnegie as less professional because of the absence of the information card, no noticeable theme, unknown title of hanging art, and poor closing announcement.

Deborah Maris Lader, On Thin Ice

- Noelle Wilcox

21c Museum Exhibition

Contemporary art collector Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson founded 21c Museum and Hotel in 2006. They are committed to broadening the access of viewing art to the public through museums like 21c, which is free of charge to the public. Along with the permanent artwork on display, 21c has expanded and includes work from all over the world. They have carefully selected engaging art work that reflect 21^st century life. When visiting the museum many things grab your attention. In particular, two works of art stood out the most, in both the physical brilliance of the art and the mentality of the reasoning behind the art. Those two art pieces are Meadow and Bombed Mosque. 

When first walking into the museum, viewers are enveloped by a room filled with sculptures that appear as buildings. The closer you approach the pieces the more you learn about the artwork. From a distance, you see the rounded architecture of buildings with middle eastern feel. As you get closer, you start to see that these buildings are made out of guns, bullets, and bullet shells. These stunning pieces were created by Al Farrow in 2010 and include an entire series of images that are designed to evoke emotion from the viewer. One of the most moving images was a sculpture of a Bombed Mosque that appeared to have been badly damaged over many years, but still standing in its deteriorated state. When reading the description of the piece, you learn of the devastation that weapons can cause on even the most holy of sites.  

Bombed Mosque.
Al Farrow, 2010
(Back)

Bombed Mosque.
Al Farrow, 2010
(Front)

Creating a building using materials with which it was destroyed, is a form of juxtaposition. This building was destroyed by weapons and this artist used weapons to recreate the building, with accurate dimensions in the architecture. It's a stark contrast between beautiful decoration and destruction within the dome. The artist was successful with his series and this one in particular, because the image conjured feelings of sadness in beauty. Moreover, Farrow was successful in making a political anti-war statement, by producing art with military materials.

Upon moving downstairs of the museum, a brightly illuminated fixture captures your eye. From afar, it almost appears as a very textured light up panel on the wall. However, as you get closer, you realize this board has hundreds of plastic strings hanging out of it. Each string has LED lights shining through, to create texture and colors that change periodically. This piece is called Meadow by Astrid Krodh. He was interested in natural and digital light coming together. This piece is a representation of the morning light transitioning to darkness, in a meadow. The changing of colors, helped achieve this effect and provided a beautiful depiction of the artist’s vision. 

Meadow.
Astrid Krodh, 2013.

This piece is successful because it perfectly captures the projection of color on the "grass" in a meadow. This image was strikingly accurate to actual morning and night, when the sun is rising and setting. When the sun rises and the rays are beamed out into the meadow, the colors are often a combination of many colors, patterns, and forms. He's successful with this because his light and pattern is never the same nor makes sense, just like the color of the sun rays.  

Overall 21c has an enjoyable diversity of artwork showcased. The artworks Meadow and Bomb Mosque stands out the most due to one having a series of multiple sculptures and the other shining bright illuminating lights that catches your eye. Al Farrow and Astrid Krodh, although having different pieces of art, both artist works were similar in being contemporary art. They both are using, to an extent, minimalism in creating the imagery of something that depicts a deeper meaning into the piece. Both artworks were stunning and very worth the visit.

- Emily Thompson

Excellent Exhibition Connected to the Carnegie

The Carnegie Center in New Albany,Indiana is shelter to a large array of prints from local artists here in southern Indiana to Wisconsin. The pieces in the center are from all around the country and give different perspectives of how art is created in different areas. Janet Ballweg, Joshua, Kolbow, and Donna Stallard are three artists’ that are worth seeing at the Carnegie. Their works seem to stand above and beyond when it comes to other pieces during the Mid America Print Council. Their works seem to be very thoughtful and very aesthically pleasing to look at.

The Carnegie Museum in downtown New Albany, there are two sides to the center. There’s the left side and the right side. In this particular case, one could say that the work in the left side could be appreciated a little more than in the right. Not saying the the left side of the museum was a success and the right side was a fail, but the work is more interesting and can be presumed to be more thoughtful and could be appreciated more by the viewer. So on the left side, there are two works that stand out beautifully comparative to the rest. Josh Kolbow and Donna Stallard. Kolbow is attending the university of North Dakota for his masters in fine arts and it shows. His beautiful linoleum cut piece, What an Ass, is something to look at. He has great detailed work and very precise cuts that transfer to the paper extremely well. You can definitely tell that everything went in his favor when he was creating and when he finished this piece. Also, if you are into politics, this could also appeal to you as well. So he is bringing in a array of audience members to view his work and not just limiting it to artists specifically.

Reaching the end of the left side are full of pieces that grab your attention, but there's one in particular that captures your eye and is very different to the rest. With it being a print making gallery you plan on seeing nothing but paper and ink as the mediums throughout the whole museum. The professor at Indiana University Southeast, used a print roller in addition to her paper and ink. She actually uses what creates the actual print in cohesion with the what the artist prints on. It's very different but very beautiful by showing the ink on the handles as print of a persons’ hands that give reference to how the artist puts in their hard work. Also the paper with the print itself is actually wrapped around the roller. You can't see the full print because it is wrapped around it and you're not allowed to move it, but from what you can see it is a very thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing work of art.

Swinging from the left side of the gallery to the right, one of the more colorful pieces in that room is a piece created by Janet Ballweg called, Hope Springs Eternal. She has created only 18 different versions of this piece and the Carnegie holds the 4th version. The purples and tones of yellow work extremely well together and make the subject pop off of the paper. She has had her masters in fine arts in Printmaking and drawing from the university of Illinois since 1985, so saying she is experienced in her field is an understatement. Her strong line work show how confident she is in her work. 

These pieces are those that stand out from the rest. The only down fall to all of the pieces in a generalized statement is the lighting. Usually lighting is supposed to be thoughtfully planned out where there is no glare in the glass of the frame so you can see the piece. The Carnegie has a few spots that may alter some viewers’ opinion of the piece or may just skip it all together because the viewing experience takes away. Overall, though the Mid America Print Council went extremely well and both sides are a pleasure to look at; the left side is just a little bit more interesting and appealing when it comes to colors and content to the pieces.

- Nash Laney

MAPC Review: "Print Matters, Printing Matters"

            We flourish in a world smothered of print. Whether we indulge in magazines or computer screens, imagery mesmerizes our focus. Printmaking rooted the history of art by the early 16^th century when print became accessible to the masses. It contributed to a greater means of understanding, thus the power of knowledge and communication thrived. Artists of the 21^st century continue to explore the traditional processes cultivated into the era of contemporary art. The Carnegie Center for Art and History hosted Mid America Print Council’s (MAPC) Juried Exhibition themed “Print Matters, Printing Matters.” Diverse with prints from 68 exceptional artists, MAPC’s hope of awareness and appreciation of traditional and contemporary printmaking was fulfilled as they encourage “printmakers remind us that we still live in a world surrounded by print media.”

Ramiro Rodriguez. Quemar y Callar (Burn and Silence Them).

            Ramiro Rodriguez applied the earliest form of printmaking known as woodcut, a type of relief print formerly popularized in the 15^th century. Quemar y Callar, or Burn and Silence Them, reiterates Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War and is directly referenced from an original plate. Bodies lay stacked, protruding in layers and crowd one another, consuming half of the work itself. A man and woman stand grinning before the dead in their solitude as the only breath of life within the print. The man’s hand effortlessly tosses a torch to the bodies below him. As if the torch were perpetually scratching the sky, its action held captive in the print permitted viewers with anticipation of the destructive brutalities of war.

Masha Schweitzer. The Air We Breathe VII.

            Further appropriated by the classics and similar to Rodriguez’ Quemar y Callar, Masha Schweitzer stimulates the mind’s consciousness in a new context of destruction. The Air We Breathe VII juxtaposes qualities of the human condition and its interdependence to the environment. Schweitzer employed her experience through monotype, a traditional printmaking method first noted in the 17^th century. The print contains an essence of painting, in which it pours rich tonalities of dream-like gestural techniques into a flock of birds. In an unsettling, eerie sky, a bird sweeps through the foreground of an industrial wasteland. By doing so, it reveals its witness to the capabilities of mankind. As the bird’s wings delicately whisk through the smog, it appears as if it is capable of swallowing him whole.

Marc Snyder. Dress Rehearsal.

            Marc Snyder chose to exhibit a more comical approach in Dress Rehearsal’s innovative adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Linocuts became a variant of woodcut in the 20^th century. In Snyder’s production, he transformed a two-dimensional linocut into a three-dimensional theatrical display of craftsmanship. The audience are given the opportunity to analyze his alienated miniature characters who stand before them, appropriated of typical Shakespearean attire, in the basis of their own world. On one hand stands the valiant Macbeth, a seemingly confident chihuahua, who bears his teeth as he eloquently grasps a cane. On the other hand, Lady Macbeth expressed as a distraught hen is only inches behind him.

            As anyone can see, printmaking’s development has been revised and edited over centuries of time. Monotype almost disappeared had it not been revived through Impressionists in the 19^th century, and linocuts were rejected for their simplicity by the art community of the early 20^th century. Printmaking may be subjective to criticism as an understated form of art, but its success is highlighted in its malleable possibilities of laborious, hand-made creativity. According to the statement of Brian Jones, Professor Emeritus of Indiana University Southeast and Juror of the exhibition, he was given “the opportunity to experience and acknowledge the wide range of approaches that make up the complex tapestry of contemporary printmaking, from the very traditional to the more experimental and innovative.”

            While each artist within the exhibition may execute similar techniques and personal touches, no print nor artist are alike. It is due to their freedom of experimentation they conceive identities that reveal demands of their processes. The technicality, improvisation, and artistic expression of the artist sustains the impressionable spirit of printmaking.

- Lori Wyne