Major Art Exhibition

AMPERSAND III, Chryssa
Indianapolis Museum of Art

           

 Recently I had the pleasure to travel to Indianapolis to visit the Indianapolis Museum of Art, or IMA. I was really surprised when I first arrived because I visit Indianapolis frequently and never realized that there was an art museum, let alone multiple professional galleries. I love museums of any kind, so the IMA was even more interesting, especially since I have started to learn to view art in a different way due to my many classes. The museum was split into different levels which included the permanent collections, along with some that change more frequently. The main collections included Contemporary, African, American, Asian, European, and Design Art. Each had a wide variety of artwork made by some very famous artists, to pieces made by more local ones. 

Terrain, Julianne Swartz
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Since I am currently in a Contemporary Art class, I decided to visit that level of the museum first, and want to focus most of my thoughts on that specific gallery. Most people, in my experiences, who are unfamiliar with art and the deeper meaning behind some pieces, tend to not fully understand contemporary art. They would rather look at a bunch of landscape paintings, or sculptures of people, almost like we are still in the Renaissance Era. Now I had the pleasure of going to the museum with my boyfriend, who is a business major, and the second we walked in you could tell by the look of his face that he was wondering what we were even looking at, because to him it was not artwork. After taking the Contemporary Art class, I was able to view the work in this museum completely different than I had before. The pieces were all so drastically different from each other, but they all seemed to fit together to create a whole. Some of my favorite pieces were those that were bigger and were sculptures. 

Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie, Ghada Amer
Indianapolis Museum of Art

The very first piece I saw when I walked into the room was Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie, by Ghada Amer.  It was a piece that challenged gender roles, and related the idea back to something almost everyone had played with as a child. Her goal was to challenge the viewer to think about who would be wearing the jumpsuits, since they were tailored differently from each other. I really thought that this piece fit with so many of the changes that are happening in society with the way we accept all genders and identities. Being in the Contemporary Art gallery, it was a great thought to try to connect all of the artwork with some sort of situation or idea that we are constantly dealing with today. The piece was visually pleasing, and it was easy to understand what the artist wanted from the viewer which I really look for in artwork.

Floor, Do-Ho Suh
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Another piece that I thought of as one of my favorites would have to be Do-Ho Suh’s Floor. It was a large glass floor with which you could stand on and it looked as if there were just a bunch of colored dots under the glass. If you looked close enough you could see that they were the hands of small figures of men and women that were posed as if they were holding the weight of me on the glass. Although this piece really didn’t have much to it, it went back to the idea of relating to something current in the world today. The only way we as a whole are going to live a better life and get through it together is if we help one another out. While this might not have been the artists direct meaning, I once again was trying to focus on how the piece made me feel as opposed to just viewing it for the visual aspect.

Floor, Do-Ho Suh
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Break of Day, Kate Gilmore
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Diabolo (neige et fleurs), Joan Mitchell
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Adding to the list of pieces that affected my thoughts and feelings is Kate Gilmore’s Break of Day. Her piece included a video of her climbing a steep plywood structure that she made which was painted white, and she would climb up with clay pots that were filled with fuchsia paint, and then drop them down so they would breakand spill paint everywhere. I normally am not attracted to videos in art galleries, so I made a point to sit and watch for 10 minutes or so. She repeated this until all 60 pots she had made were destroyed, so I obviously couldn’t spend a lot of time watching the video. The artist stated that her piece referenced “major movements throughout art history, ranging from gestural Abstract Expressionism painting, to Minimalist objects, to Feminist artworks and endurance –based performance art of the late 1960’s and 1970’s.” This really reminded me about a lot of the artwork and ideas we had been talking about in my Contemporary Art class, and made a full circle back to me about what the whole Contemporary Art movement is. I was so unfamiliar before this year about art that wasn’t a painting of a landscape or something that is very easy to understand what it is. I was also unable to understand artwork on a personal level as many Renaissance type paintings didn’t necessarily have a deeper thought or meaning, which is what I was used to looking at in previous art classes.

One Minute Sculpture: Theory of Painting, Erwin Wurm
Indianapolis Museum of Art

One Minute Sculpture: Theory of Painting, Erwin Wurm
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Although I didn’t mention a lot of the artwork I saw in the museum, I thought it was more important for me to reflect on the past few weeks of writing my blogs and learning more than I ever thought I would about how to look at art in a deeper way. I know that if I went to this museum a year ago, I would’ve just walked by everything saying oh that’s cool, without even reading about the artist and what their thoughts were. I believe that visiting the IMA was a way for me to really put into action what I had been trying to do this whole semester when going to art galleries. I am unable to put into words how thankful I am for learning about Contemporary Art and how it has affected so many different artists and movements, and the IMA captures some of the great artwork that has been made through the past few decades.

 

Untitled (Mylar), Tara Donovan
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Artist Lecture - Jason Walker

On the River, Down the Road, Solo Show, Jason Walker, Bellevue Arts Museum

       Jason Walker recently spoke at an artist lecture at University Galleries.  He has been a studio artist for the past 16 years, supporting himself by selling work that he has made. I wasn't sure what to expect with Jason, as I didn't know what medium he primarily uses for his work. I was surprised to find out that he is mainly a ceramic artist, but someone who I would also consider a phenomenal painter. In high school, he obtained a job painting signs and billboards, which is where he ultimately learned to paint. Later, he spent a summer in Japan after getting his undergraduate degree, where he learned the art of ceramics.

Low Tide, Jason Walker

       After spending time traveling and learning, he decided to get his graduate degree and focus on something that doesn't seem very common in the art world, at least to my knowledge. He wanted to make lifelike drawings and paintings that were done on 3D sculptures. His reasoning for this was because before, when studying ceramics, he only focused on patterns and designs, which is what most ceramic work looks like, but wanted to challenge himself by doing something that interested him more.

Desert Frog, Jason Walker

       Something I found very interesting that Jason brought up was the fact that throughout most of his life, everything he did revolved around an academic calendar. After finishing all of his years of schooling, he didn't know what to do with himself, but really wanted to just focus on just being an artist. This is something I have thought a lot about before, wondering where I will be with my artwork in two years when I graduate, and if I will be able to support myself solely on my ideas. For Jason it seemed as if he felt the same way for a while. He talked about visiting craft fairs often, where he would sell bowls and cups that he had made, and although it wasn’t what he really wanted to do, it was encouraging knowing that people bought his artwork.

Stopping to sniff the Flowers in My Concrete Shoes, Jason Walker

       After really getting to sell his work for a while, he realized that he wanted to start experimenting with what really interested him. The two factors that he has focused on throughout his most recent work, have sort of been two major factors in the world today, playing a primary factor in the way we live. Technology and Nature.

Manifest Destiny, Jason Walker

        His work is very personal, and a self reflection of the culture we live in. Technology has both its pros and cons when factoring into the quality of life that it brings us, while nature also is something we need to cherish and protect, yet we aren’t doing so, especially when it comes to newer technology distracting us from it’s beauty. He does an excellent job capturing real life narratives through the paintings and drawings on the sculptures.

Standing in the Grass, Jason Walker

       He enjoys using symbolism with the nature figures he sculpts. For example, fish symbolize riches and wealth, while birds represent flying to heavens, and can then be associated solely with the heavens. He uses these two figures as the main canvas for his paintings. Another symbol he uses is frogs, which show an environmental change if they start to populate or die out. Last, one of the main ones he has used is bears, because where there are bears there are no people. He likes the symbolism behind each of these animals, especially in context with the paintings he does on them.   

Split Down the Middle, But One Always Wants More, Jason Walker

       Along with animals, he likes to depict landscapes that show either nature, or big industrial cities. It shows the advancement of technology, along with the negative effects that it has on nature, which he shows by using the animal figures. His work is very ironic in the sense that each symbol or aspect contradicts another in some way. I believe this is why his work is so successful, because he uses images and ideas that are so familiar with people, but allows the work to speak for itself and let you determine what it is meaning, something positive or negative. 

Threadfin Jack (Side 1), Jason Walker

Threadfin Jack (Side 2), Jason Walker

       As you can see, many of the names that he uses for his work are those ideas or thoughts that most people have either heard, or are familiar with. He is so interested in the way we interact with the world and those ideas involving nature and technology. He says that culture created his appreciation for nature through traveling and studying the way people act in different areas. I believe that his work can teach many people to also appreciate nature and what it has done for us. We can learn from it, while also looking at amazing artwork.

Staring Into the Crystal Ball, Jason Walker