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Jeffry Cudlin has put together a thought provoking show built on a premise of Arts relationship with life as we live it. All of the artists have developed works that are built with objects and items that are in our day-to-day life experience.
My highlights of the show:
Anissa Mack, My Sister’s Diary. Every week, new copies of redacted pages from the artist’s sister’s journal are posted onto this public bulletin board outside of the arts center. What I really like about this is the handwriting of the journal pages are different and the same all at the same time – it has an authenticity that is really engaging.
Mandy Burrow, creates tableau that are made and meant to be seen in her subjects’ living spaces. The installations could be just about anything, but the artist claims a collaboration with the intended subject. I believe this, but miss what might be a certain unspoken eccentricity to the installations. They seem almost too in order. However they are rich in detail and pathos.
Christian Moeller, Mojo. A curious video of a theater spotlight follows random passer-bys’ as the move through the beam. This is both amusing and weirdly big brother-ish. I feel it asks more questions than it answers and at the same time, the questions are barely whispered by the art – while only coming to the forefront upon further thought about the work.
All in all the show puts forth an idea of art not always thought about or seen. If fact I’m sure you could point at some of the “major art critics” of our time (and years gone by) and see their disdain for this sort of thinking. It’s a curious place to visualize a group of art works from, and to be most successful, I think it requires viewers to think about the show afterwords and question a notion or two about what they expect from the art in our time.