State of the Arts: August 14, 2009 Archive
Layers of meaning
Posted at 8:00 AM on August 14, 2009
by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Painting, Public Art
Alexandre Farto paints on walls and then carves into them, turning them into three dimensional compositions. The exposed brickwork gives them an aged feeling. While watching the video of him working I found myself wincing as he chipped away at surfaces that he'd already beautifully painted. Why destroy something perfect? But what we might think of as finished is sometimes just a stopping point on a longer artistic journey.
Opening Tonight: The Beautifully Grotesque
Posted at 12:14 PM on August 14, 2009
by Marianne Combs
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Painting
Sylvia Ortiz explores the strange duality that many women endure, which is to say feeling simultaneously beautiful and ugly.
Ortiz' women often have missing limbs, or their arms and legs are twisted and contorted in uncomfortable positions. And yet they have pretty faces, are delicate and feminine, and for all their distortion, are still quite alluring.
Usually in the art world the beautiful and the grotesque are juxtaposed against one another for effect (think "Beauty and the Beast," the "Hunchback of Notre Dame," etc). But Ortiz mixes the two inseperably in the same image.
The result is an image which at first draws us in with its bright colors and seductive eyes, only to then make us question why we'd be drawn to something so disturbing.
An exhibition of Sylvia Ortiz' work opens tonight at Rogue Buddha in Minneapolis.
(1 Comments)Slant/Light/Volume
Posted at 6:13 PM on August 14, 2009
by Euan Kerr
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Design, Museums, Sculpture
(MPR photo by Euan Kerr. Click on image to enlarge.)
If you are passing through the Walker Art Center anytime soon, set aside a few minutes to see "Slant/Light/Volume." There's just one piece in the show, an untitled work by Robert Irwin.
It's quite simple: a huge piece of fabric stretched across an entire gallery at an angle, lit from behind. Seen in person, it is stunning, a glowing plane hanging among the faint echoes bouncing through the Walker's chambered galleries.
The piece was designed for the opening of what was then the Walker's new building in 1971. It hasn't been displayed for 20 years, and it's definately worth experiencing now.
(1 Comments)If you only see one South African sci-fi movie this year......
Posted at 6:00 PM on August 14, 2009
by Euan Kerr
Filed under: Film
Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is an unlikely hero for our time. He's a slightly dim bureaucrat who is assigned the job of clearing the aliens from a shanty town just outside Johannesburg, and frankly he blows it.
Part of the problem is he's got the job through nepotism. His father in law is a high government official. The other thing is the aliens are from outer space, and Wikus, and the entire human race are over in over their heads.
Writer/director Neill Blomkamp has deftly created a film which provides the thrills and special effects which sci-fi fans crave. Yet it also delivers a parable about tolerance and the importance of looking at what lies beneath the surface (in this case quite literally.) Seen against the legacy of apartheid, Blomkamp's film carried even more power.
This is a director to watch in the future.
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