Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Reviews in brief
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[Note: Each of the photos accompanying the reviews are my personal favorites from each show, unfortunately I forgot to write down titles]
Zen-Inspired Art Show at Big Car North. This show... I don't even know where I want to begin. The title itself sent up warning flares, a fear of shallow, uninspired interpretations of zen. I should trust my instincts more. For me the problem with the show was that few seemed to really be playing with the concepts of zen and in particular zen art practices in any sort of substantive manner. Instead of seriously delving into the ideas behind the practice of zen, I felt that people were just appropriating zen on a very shallow level. You know, 'if I paint something Asian looking' then it certainly embodies zen. To me it is like all those people you see walkin around with tattoos of Asian text, Kanji, when you know good and well that the person with the tattoo can not read it. I think Asian text look cool too, but come on. If you are going to appropriate a foreign culture you admire into your art, I would hope that it wasn't in such a blase attempt. Do something fresh with it, something original. Keep with the spirit of the original work and do it justice. Overall, I am not saying that the work was all bad, just that as an exhibition it was uninspired. The one surprise for me in the show were the small sumi ink drawings by Jo Legner. Hey Jo, where did all the naked people go? These pieces were very nice and quite tame from what many people may expect from her. I must say that I adore the piece pictured here; playful, simple, beautiful.
Cabinet of Wonders, works be Kipp Normand at Flux Space. Once again standing in a good sized crowd in the small sized gallery I was able to see another intriguing outing at Flux Space. This round brought us the rustic, mysterious, assemblages of Kipp Normand. Typically, my favorite pieces of Kipps are his wooden boxes, filled with bits and pieces, strange and unusual pieces of junk and imagery from years gone by, but in this show it is his collages that I think take the show. Kipp's work is always shrouded in mystery and romance. He is the great collector of strange objects and pieces that others have thrown away, forgotten. I love his use of blue prints as constellations, remarkable. These are the aspects of his work that I am drawn to, but there can also be a down side. Something I can't quite put into words though I will try. Perhaps I should have woken up early enough to go to his slide talk at Flux on Saturday like I intended, maybe he would have cleared up some of these questions for me. I feel that sometimes I want more from the work. More of a narrative perhaps, a clearer story as to why we are looking at some of these objects together though I still want the mystery and ambiguity. At times when the boxes have to hold there own, they lose a bit of there power, where seen amongst all the other works surrounding it they are strong. I daydream that Kipp will one day decide he is an installation artist, filling rooms rather than just boxes. A whole space filled with his pieces like a museum of wonders. Beautiful. Very much a worthwhile show to check out.
[More shows reviews coming as I finish writing them, so check back again later.]
8 Responses to “Reviews in brief”
April 12, 2006 at 12:37 PM
The Indianapolis Times call it: "poorly done, not refreshing and not relevant... an event the biggest brain in the world would forget..."
April 15, 2006 at 10:11 AM
Grammer/Spelling/Punctuation Check
Mr. Grow, if you're going to write these reviews with a hint of intelligence, at least carry the idea through with correct spelling and punctuation:
"hold THEIR own", (not THERE)
"lost a bit of THEIR power", (not THERE)
"Kipp's" (singular possessive,not Kipps)
On to the next show, eh?
April 15, 2006 at 12:45 PM
his gramma is good.
thanks for asking anyway
April 15, 2006 at 2:31 PM
Thank You for your honesty about my poor writing. I agree. You are completely correct on the grammer, spelling, and particularly my punctuation. Punctuation is my least understood aspect of writing. Saying I am just an artist and not a real writer would serve as a cop out. These are all things that I have been attempting to improve upon. But until a time comes that, and I am sure that it won't, all the writers submit to a literarty editor first, before posting; we are going to have to forgive some of this. On my part, I will try and improve these skills more as we go and perhaps get a second reader to proof for me. My only excuse, aside from poor technical writing knowledge, is that I am typically writing and posting quite fast, whenever I have the time in my schedule. In that moment I often don't catch things on my when I proof read it. I am actually shocked by the "there", their", and "they're" issue as I do understand completly the difference between these. Haha. Oh well, I guess for better writing skills, we can all go read the STAR.
[Please excuse all spelling, grammer, and punctuation above, as I havn't learned from my mistakes yet.]
April 15, 2006 at 3:06 PM
Why'd you spend all that time in those pesky little art classes when you could have been taking real college classes like jurnalissm and spellen.
April 15, 2006 at 6:41 PM
Okay, you're not allowed to correct someone's "grammer."
April 15, 2006 at 7:08 PM
Lol, my teachers all warned me that I was going to need to know that stuff. I am waiting for a computer program that is programed well enough to point out all the grammer, spelling, and punctuation mistakes in my writing and explain to me how to best fix them. That would be of great service to me. Anyone know of one? Until then, I welcome all to point out where I went wrong.
April 19, 2006 at 2:47 PM
GRAMMAR!!!!!!
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