Art Reviews
Art Reviews
Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent
Nelson Adkins Museum
In Shirin Neshat's Turbulent from (1998), two screens are projected opposite each other in a room about 12’X20’ the viewers must stand along the edge of the wall between the two video projection screens. On one side a man stands on the stage of a theater in front of an audience of men. He sings very intensity a love song that is a poem by the 13th century mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi. On the opposite side, on the other screen a veiled woman (Sussan Deyhim) waits in shadows. When he is finished singing the woman steps forward and begins to sing, she is also in the same theater, but it is empty. She sings a song with no words, it consists of howls and screams that can make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. The man and the woman are separated on two different screens to create a tense dialogue of differences. The gestures and sounds that reach across the two screens emphasize the difficulty that woman go though in Islamic societies, being separated and segregated from their male counterparts in society, and the pain they suffer having to live this way.
Wiliam Kentridge Felix in Exile
Nelson Adkins Museum
This is the fifth of eight films that complete the Drawings for Projection series, which William Kentridge worked from 1989 to 1999. All the films consist of 30 to 40 charcoal drawings. In the process, Kentridge not only deals with the editing, dissolving, erasing, and overdrawing techniques, as customarily done in most animated films; he uses these techniques as artistic means of expression. Kentridge develops his filmed stories during the act of drawing, he overworking his images and repeatedly photographs them with a 35mm camera. The charcoal drawing technique allows for a seamless transition from one stage to the next. Felix in Exile was created in 1994, during the public debates on the relationship between the country’s division of ownership and the formation of identity which accompanied the first open elections in South Africa. The film tells the storie of Felix, a man living in exile in Paris, and of Nandi, a woman working as a land surveyor. The woman is Felix’s alter ego,she represents his longing for his homeland; which his hope of this shatter when Nandia is shot. Willie Cole AfterburnUlrich Museum of Contemeparary ArtContemporary artist Willie Cole transforms ordinary domestic objects such as bicycle parts, bathroom fixtures, irons and lawn jockeys into powerful works of art, embedded with references to the African-American experience and inspired by West African religion, mythology and culture. Afterburn is a traveling exhibition of Willie Cole’s work organized by the University of Wyoming Art Museum, features some wonderful examples of his sculptures, scorched canvases and ironing boards are kind of a trademark of his work. The iron takes on a double meaning within his work, the West-African culture he references throughout his work has a goddess of iron, (a very well respected deity). The iron to Cole represents the labour; torment and toil the African American people have had to endure. The steam iron is the single most important icon in Cole’s visual vocabulary, he creates figurative pieces from them, such as fertility goddesses and uses the in a painterly fashion by scorching canvass, wood and other sub-straights. The imprint of the iron pointed up references a face or African mask; pointed down, it takes on the form of a shield. By scorching canvases with the iron, Cole creates patterns reminiscent of Adinkra cloth found in Ghana.
Wallace Berman and His Circle of Friends
Ulrich Museum of Contemeparary ArtFrom 1955 to 1964 Los Angeles based artist Wallace Berman (1926-1976) privately made and published nine issues of “Semina,” a loose leaf journal/scrapbook of contributions by friends and artists Making limited copies of works by contributors and collaborators, Berman distributed “Semina” to those within his collaborative circle. Based on those nine issues, co-curators Kristine McKenna and Michael Duncan have put together this exhibition which consists mainly of previously unexhibited works drawn from this journal which illustrate and document Berman’s enormous influence on the aesthetics of his generation and beyond. The show at the Ulrich has about 250 pieces of art from some very well known participators from the beat generation and some not so well known. The exhibit follows true beat form, when you walk into the museum room your visual senses are overwhelmed. There is so much to see, I would suggest setting a couple of hours aside for this show. The exhibit features drawings, paintings, photography, collage, sculptures, video, assemblages, poems and book and from within Berman’s circle of friends
