"'Mutuality in Dichotomy': Come for more than the Kandinsky," by Leora Akbarov, The Student Life
The 平特五不中 College Museum of Art鈥檚 鈥淢utuality in Dichotomy: Photography from the Permanent Collection,鈥 which opened Sept. 4, is the fifth in a series of student-curated exhibits featured by the museum.
Vivienne Yixuan Shi PO 鈥19 developed the exhibit last summer, and she focuses on the dichotomous relationship between aerial and close-up photography, revealing that the two modes are more congruous than suggested by their differences in scale and objective.
The exhibit consists of works drawn from the museum鈥檚 permanent collection, which Kathleen Howe, the museum director, totals at around 15,000 objects.
According to Shi, deciding which pieces to include was not easy: 鈥淚n the final stages of developing this exhibit, we were still choosing from nearly 100 different pieces. 鈥 It was very difficult to have to exclude some of my favorite artists.鈥
At first glance, it might not be immediately clear what the photographs in the exhibit are portraying, or that they are photographs at all.
Libby George PO 鈥20, who attended the exhibit鈥檚 opening reception last Saturday, said the featured Barry Anderson piece, 鈥淜entucky鈥 (an aerial photograph of a Kentucky landscape), reminded her of eggs. Babs Peisch PO 鈥19, another attendee, said Anderson鈥檚 work looked like egg-breasts.
The photographs on display are united by their abstraction of concrete subject matter.
Aaron Siskind鈥檚 鈥淒etail of Peeling Paint鈥 is a black-and-white close-up of chipped wall paint that could easily pass for an aerial photograph of a beach or even an abstract painting.
Similarly, Barry Anderson obscures reality in 鈥淎labama,鈥 a piece notable for its swirling, fantastical color composition and visually striking effect. This whimsical work clearly has little interest in realistically representing the Alabama landscape which it depicts.
In the brochure accompanying the exhibit, Shi puts 鈥淢utuality in Dichotomy鈥 into conflict with a statement that 19th-century poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire made about photography: 鈥淭his industry, by invading the territories of art, has becomes art鈥檚 most mortal enemy.鈥
His argument centers around the idea that photography is meant to capture the physical world, and therefore cannot create and express at great depths in the way that other artforms can.
Shi鈥檚 inclusion of pieces that deliberately focus on form and framing deconstructs reality, debunking Baudelaire鈥檚 idea that photography exists merely as a form of 鈥渕echanical reproduction.鈥
鈥淭hese photographers actively explore the aesthetic potential of topography as abstract form. Their work may be visually mystifying, psychologically soothing, or hallucinatory,鈥 Shi wrote in the brochure.
The mutuality between abstract art and photography is highlighted in Shi鈥檚 inclusion of 鈥淜leine Welten (Small World),鈥 a piece from a series by Wassily Kandinsky. World-renowned Russian contemporary artist Kandinsky uses angry, twisting lines, and hectic overlay of shapes to convey a sense of existential chaos.
The work throws reality into question much in the same way that the photographers, such as Anderson and Siskind, do in their works, which transform the ordinary into the strange and the unfamiliar.
As for the Kandinsky piece itself, Shi remarked that it isn鈥檛 the artist鈥檚 鈥渕ost representative鈥 work, as she explained that Kadinsky鈥檚 art theory is incomplete without discussing colors, while the piece in her exhibit is in black and white.
Shi added that big names draw big crowds, but that Kandinsky鈥檚 abstraction provides for the context of the exhibition. 鈥淭he 鈥榳orld鈥 depicted in Kandinsky鈥檚 prints is not constructed as a straightforward representation, but conveyed through idiosyncratic marks and symbols,鈥 Shi writes in her exhibit鈥檚 brochure essay.
She continues: 鈥淭his is an alternate mode of representing reality. It is an approach that asks the viewer to re-think ways of representing the world that they take for granted. That same approach, one which prompts us to re-view our world, is used by photographers who do not depict the external world conventionally, instead choosing non-standard points of view, such as in aerial photography, or by excerpted fragments.鈥
On the whole, Shi鈥檚 collection has little to do with 鈥榖ig names,鈥 or for that matter, any of the 16 individual works featured in it.
The exhibit relies instead on Shi鈥檚 ability to connect the pieces to one another, ultimately working to ask the question: what is the role of photography in modern art?
For those open to a conceptually interactive experience, this exhibit is sure to provoke the mind. Those who are not interested in engaging Shi鈥檚 narrative might want to look elsewhere.