KMAC
Museum is a contemporary art museum located in downtown Louisville (715 West
Main Street). Their admission is free, making it completely easy to go and
enjoy art when they are open to the public: Tuesday through Saturday 10AM to
6PM and Sunday 10AM to 5PM. The KMAC Museum’s current exhibition is Victory Over the Sun: The Poetics and
Politics of Eclipse on the second floor gallery. The exhibition opened on
August 19 and will close on December 3, 2017. There are 19 artist whose work are
in the exhibition: Lita Albuquerque, Sanford Biggers, Bigert & Bergström,
Mel Bochner, Bethany Collins, Nick Doyle, Olafur Eliasson, Stephen Irwin, Titus
Kaphar, Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, Matthew Porter, Letitia Quesenberry,
Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Barbara Takenaga, Jan Tichy, Marijke Van Warmerdam and
Brenna Youngblood. The work in the exhibition by these 19 artists revolve
around the theme of the solar eclipse that took place on August 21, 2017.
There
was some work in Victory Over the Sun:
The Poetics and Politics of Eclipse that just seemed to connect with the
theme of the eclipse on the basic level, such as Olafur Eliasson’s piece Your Folded Sunset Behind a Black Hole.
Eliasson’s piece is a great piece; looking at it immediately one’s mind goes to
an eclipse. After looking more in depth at Eliasson’s work and other artist’s
work in this exhibition that connect with the theme on the surface level or
reading the artist statement the viewer then gets a sense of a different
meaning from what their artist statement gives the viewer. However, there were a great handful of pieces
that did seem to connect on a deeper level with the theme in mind. The two
works of art that most connected with the theme more than just surface were
works by Marijke Van Warmerdam and Lita Albuquerque.
Marijke
Van Warmerdam’s piece is a film called Light;
it has the duration of 1 minute and 30 seconds long. It is a film that is
silent and displays blinds with the sun shining through. Warmerdam’s hand is manipulating
the blinds to let in more/less light, thus replicating the movement of the Moon
covering the Sun. By using no sound she is capturing the essence of an eclipse
that occurs without the presence of sound. There is no music to help set the
mood of an eclipse. The mood is set by the Earth taking on its natural beauty.
It is that single moment where the Sun and the Moon meet, Warmerdam’s film
shows that with the blinds covering the sunlight beaming through. This film is
quite a short; however, if it was longer or shorter the film would lose its
meaning and purpose.
Lita
Albuquerque’s piece, Fibonacci Lunar
Activation, is a mixed media painting composed of a concaved
pitch black sphere outlined in illuminated white. The background consists of a
raised Fibonacci number sequence. The Fibonacci sequence is a number sequence
that occurs naturally in nature; Humans, snails, and leaves all contain
Fibonacci sequences. The concaved sphere references the sun behind the moon
while an eclipse is happening along with the white outlining the concaved
sphere. The number sequence is referencing the connection Earth, Space, and
math. The entire piece represents an eclipse by tying together two bodies in
space, Earth, and the math that helps predict these events. This is conveyed
remarkably with making a two dimensional piece have a feel of three dimensional
(math being two dimensional on paper and the eclipse being three
dimensional).
Both
pieces do a good job of representing the eclipse in a very different ways.
Albuquerque’s piece depicts the event in a grand scale by bringing together
space, the Earth, and mathematics. On
the other hand, Warmerdam’s video depicts the simplicity of the eclipse by
comparing it to the simple action of blocking the sun with common blinds.
All
of the work chosen fits with the theme of the 2017 eclipse nicely. Overall this
exhibition is well worth going to and spending one’s time appreciating art.
Leia Roberts
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