WLCM BCK 2010

This week we viewed the show at the Mason Gross gallery, which was essentially a welcome back show for the faculty, grad students, and a few separate exhibits that encompass a wide variety of medias.  Seeing as how the show has no specific theme to the entire show, it is quite striking how the works accent each other and compliment each other, and even seem to create slight themes betwixt themselves.

The first area that I thought was very compelling, visually and emotionally, was the extravagant room of Lyda Craig.  Looking immediately to the right of the room, you notice a portrait done in pastel on paper.  This is her "Self-Portrait (in studio) (1997)" and it is of striking resemblance of many old portraiture paintings.  Medium shot, very classic composition.  There also exists beautiful crosshatching and flourishes that add to the overall gesture and background of the piece.  Then you move down the wall and find the sketchbook of sketchbooks.  This delicate book is riddled with tribal renderings and spot on figures, reminiscent of all those old masters (and in this I mean people like Da Vinci, Michalangelo, to Durrer and such).  Just take a look at these pages to the left.  They are obviously done with live models, possibly because such is the way it needs to be done to get that absolute true motion and feel of another person in a drawing.  These sketches are so beautifully paired to the portrait and other paintings and such that riddle the room.  Such as Raphael had hundreds of studies of body and figure before embarking on his School of Athens, Lyda displays her studies of her concepts that you can find in her paintings and portrait work.  This brown sketchbook is FULL of portrait work, studies, paintings of landscape, colored pencil experiments in color, and pencil renderings of what appear to be tiny trinkets.  All in all i spent most of the time in this room and truth be told I was probably most concerned about this room and particularly these works.  Also I thoroughly enjoyed the diptych like portrait paintings of the grandparents and the studies that accompanied them.
The next area that i became fond of in my trek about the rooms was the New Grey by Shane Whilden.  this digital print provides an interesting landscape executed in a very futuristic like vision.  It is broken into small strips of color that blend together to appear maroon or reddish from afar.  The Lanscape (looking very much like 2001's stargate landscape sequence) is broken into about three planes that recede into red, but the interesting thing is all levels of the landscape appear to include the same colors, just in variation.  The landscape, painted like quality of this photograph is quite daunting and possibly and homage to old western landscape paintings.
This piece i feel could be paired with the sculpture by Patrick- Strezelec Syn in 2010.  This cast aluminum, limestone, stainless steel peice is obnoxious and green and might compliment the reddish of the landscape.  Although that might take away from its wonderful placement i the gallery.  Also I might have not been able to sit next to it whils we spoke in their and thusly i might not like it at much as i do.  Sitting around it I envisioned multiple layers and pedestals that could could be stood upon, like an Escher drawing, or one of the Inception movie posters.  The peice had an overall circular shape, yet seemed to defy gravity at points with its leaning and balancing act.  I found these futuristic pieces very science fiction like and interesting on the whole and also i thought that they gave a good balance to the classical work that much of the show displayed.

This show, in my opinion, was an excellent way to reintroduce us to the gallery.  The set up was classy, the art was grand, and there was a lot of things fot us to choose from.  Many works like the Insulate work, the paintings that stood upright, Rapheal's work and its awkward placement, and even the text font placement of the show title worked to the advantage of the show and really made the show a top notch display of the talent that the artists involved hold.