3 posts tagged “exhibition”
I had a chance for the first time in a long time to return to SEI Investments for a tour of the West Collection. The collection (and the SEI campus) has grown significantly since I left in 2000 but there were still some pieces that I remembered.
The tour focused on a few main areas as we couldn't possibly see the entire collection in only 90 minutes. First was the "Reality Check" exhibit in what appears to have become the main exhibit hall. There were a few pieces from familier names like Chris Jordan's large scale color photographs, Peter Garfield's exploding house models, and Philadelphia artist Alex Da Corte's bejeweled snake.
I was drawn to a manipulated photograph by Sangbin Im that was re-worked to create an out-of-scale sky line over an every day street. I also liked tiny jewel like mosaic's made with, of all things, broken up chips of cockroach wings by Fabian Pena Diaz.
The idea of cockroach wing mosaics is a bit repulsive, but the detail and tonality that the artist achieves with this simple material is amazing. This particular one is a mosaic on a light box. Others in the collection were on paper and included subject matter as diverse as a human heart and a butterfly.
Though the material choice is a unorthodox, the Fabian pieces fit right into what seemed to be a broad (though I would guess unintentional) theme within the collection; sort of an artistic OCD. Many of the works required such obsessive attention during their creation. Andy Yoder's massive constructions made from Licorice, Roxy Paine's lifelike mushroom patch, Drew Leshko's detailed reconstructions of Walker Evan's church photographs, Mark Lombardi's hand drawn conspiracy maps, Richard Stipl's carefully varied but repeated self sculptures,Yong Ho Ji's life size sharks made from strips of old tires, and Minako Abe's amazing paintings produced by layering one color at a time through templates.
Ok, it's not really fair to characterize it in terms like ODC since nearly any art requires that kind of attention and dedication. I guess it is more the sense of repeitition and pattern that seems to run through the pieces. Anyway, moving on...
The last part of the tour was the "Hot Hall." Since the collection is housed in the offices of a public company, this is the hall where the controversial pictures go to cool their heels until some brave team adopts a work for their own office area. There is at least one piece that has been there for a decade, trapped in sort of an artistic purgatory.
It might be some time before these two haunting pieces by Jill Greenburg make their escape as well.
I have two pictures in the national spring open at the wayne art center in Radnor, PA. The two pictures are "I used to Dream of Flying"
and "Thomas and Friend".
Additionally, "I used to Dream of Flying" was selected for Photo Review's annual contest issue.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the opening reception at Wayne, and in fact, haven't been able to get there during their weekday hours to see the show and it ends next week while I'm away in Portland. This is the first time I've had a show that I wasn't able to make.
