Week of April 4

Monday, April 4



Above is the watercolor by William Powhida entitled "Why You Should Buy Art!". This work takes art to the masses than just the limited pool of collectors who have the ability to buy unique and expensive art objects. This piece is interesting as it is not what people would automatically consider to be art.

We have been discussing collections in class. As a child Christina collected Pogs. I got them from a variety of sources including birthday parties, game rooms and trading them with friends. As a child Katie collected Beanie Babies. Katie received them as presents and when new beanie babies would come out she would purchase them. Although we didn't know it at the time, our collections told us about what we were the most interested in. Collections come in all shapes and sizes and can be defined by collecting many different objects not just art.

Wednesday, April 6

In 1992, Fred Wilson did an installation piece at the Maryland Historical Society. Fred works with various collections to put together exhibits that will mean something else. At the Maryland Historical Society the collection was to highlight the Native and African Americans in Maryland. His unique artist approach is to examine, question and redefine the traditional display of art and artifacts in museums. This leads viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning. The way Wilson places objects, forces the viewer to question cultural institutions and how they convey historical truth and artistic value.

Week of March 28

Monday, March 28



Above is an image of Doris Salcedo's work called "Shibboleth". This is the first piece of work to ever directly be done in a turbine hall. The walls of the crevice are lined with a steel mesh fence. Salcedo's work focuses the viewers eyes directly to the floor making it the principal focus of this work. "Shibboleth" stirs questions regarding sculpture, space, architecture, and the shaky foundations of which modern objects are built. "Shibboleth" is used to exclude those who do not belong to a particular group. It deems them unsuitable. This work was entitled "Shibboleth" because Salcedo is addressing racism and colonialism. This work enables the viewer to question the truths that we already know by living in the modern world.

Friday, April 1

Today we visited the University Art Museum at the University of Albany. The exhibit that was taking place was Eunjung Hwang - Three Thousand Revisits and Ati Maier - Event Horizon.

Above is a photo of  the work "Sharpie" by Eunjung Hwang. We found this inflated sculpture to be particularly interesting as it is out of the norm. It has a cartoon design to it which we found is unique to Eunjung Hwang's style. This piece of her work derives from a family of quasi-figurative characters from her personal dreams.

Above is another piece of artwork from Eunjung Hwang. This piece is in a series of works of various animations. The animations follow a story line in favor of something that is instinctive. The images derive from an oddly twisted world in which certain behaviors lead to violence. Hwang's characters lead us through a world in which the foolishness of humans actions are played out. Hwang has a fascination about supernatural things (ghosts, superstitious beliefs) and sometimes encounters dreams that show the hidden truth about the human condition. Hwang also gets ideas from comic books. At the exhibit there were also works of Eunjung Hwang's animations in video projections.

Above are two photos taken of works by Ati Maier's - Event Horizon. Ati Maier uses a dizzying variety of colors, lines, warped spaces and swirling movements that attract the viewer to its complexity. She depicts landscapes that use conventions of traditional painting while keeping a connection to historical art and sources of science. Maier has used her works to develop 3D animations which you can see in the second photo. She produces the sensation of actually moving through her paintings.