Spring Break
Rose opens with surrealism, film
by Emily Leifer
Staff writer
Arts | 9/23/08
Posted online at 11:34 PM EST on 9/22/08
/ Last updated at 3:24 AM EST on 9/22/08
On Thursday, Sept. 25, the Rose Art Museum will celebrate the opening of its three new shows, "Invisible Rays: The Surrealism Legacy," "Project for a New American Century" and "Drawing on Film." "Invisible Rays: The Surrealism Legacy" showcases both the works of famous surrealist artists and more contemporary artists who have been influenced by surrealist ideas in a specially designed surrealist-inspired environment. "Project for a New American Century" debuts many of the contemporary works acquired by the Rose in the past year, while "Drawing on Film" presents a wide survey of art that directly manipulates film to create moving images. All the exhibits are free and open to the public. They will run through Dec. 14.
"Project for a New American Century" hangs in the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg and Lower Rose Galleries of the Museum. Guest curator Randi Hopkins selected the works for this show from the Rose Museum's recent acquisitions. Hopkins chose to name the show "Project for a New American Century" after a 2004 work on paper of the same title by Dominic McGill, as the title is "open-ended and a comment on where we are." Hopkins explained that the show consists of work that has come to the Rose in the past year and that McGill's work serves as an interesting centerpiece. All the works in the show were made around the turn of the 21st century. The McGill piece has a particularly interesting relationship to the century because it looks backward on history and forward to the future even if that future involves "no fun, no future, no oil," one of the messages drawn with pencil on the 80-inch by 60-foot coil of paper hung from the ceiling. Walking through the coil, she described how the viewer can enter it, engage with it, and get lost in it. All over the work, words and images bring up many divisive issues, such as guns, drugs and poverty. This creates an overwhelming environment and forces us to search for a way out of this loop of history.
By trying to escape this loop, artists of this century are rethinking their methods of operation. Hopkins explained that in this century artists are losing the confidence that they demonstrated in the abstract expressionist era of the 1940s and 1950s. Toward the end of the century, artists began reflecting on the past and started rethinking whether their works still had meaning and personal value. The McGill piece is wordy and noisy, with no particular point except to bombard the viewer with information. It expresses the idea that we don't know where we are. Hopkins went on to say that many contemporary artists, instead of inventing their own imagery, scavenge from the real world. They try to find a new angle on what already exists. As Americans, we are rethinking what we thought we knew. Old ways of doing things and of making art don't express who we are anymore. In the 1960s minimalism was confident and macho. It was industrial, cold and architectural. It searched for an absolute within the vocabulary of high modernism. By the turn of the century many artists, some of them female, took that vocabulary and made it more personal, irregular and idiosyncratic, claiming, "The cube is mine too." Downstairs in the main gallery, there is a minimalist monochrome piece made of eye shadow created by Rachel Lachowicz.
"Project for a New American Century" hangs in the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg and Lower Rose Galleries of the Museum. Guest curator Randi Hopkins selected the works for this show from the Rose Museum's recent acquisitions. Hopkins chose to name the show "Project for a New American Century" after a 2004 work on paper of the same title by Dominic McGill, as the title is "open-ended and a comment on where we are." Hopkins explained that the show consists of work that has come to the Rose in the past year and that McGill's work serves as an interesting centerpiece. All the works in the show were made around the turn of the 21st century. The McGill piece has a particularly interesting relationship to the century because it looks backward on history and forward to the future even if that future involves "no fun, no future, no oil," one of the messages drawn with pencil on the 80-inch by 60-foot coil of paper hung from the ceiling. Walking through the coil, she described how the viewer can enter it, engage with it, and get lost in it. All over the work, words and images bring up many divisive issues, such as guns, drugs and poverty. This creates an overwhelming environment and forces us to search for a way out of this loop of history.
By trying to escape this loop, artists of this century are rethinking their methods of operation. Hopkins explained that in this century artists are losing the confidence that they demonstrated in the abstract expressionist era of the 1940s and 1950s. Toward the end of the century, artists began reflecting on the past and started rethinking whether their works still had meaning and personal value. The McGill piece is wordy and noisy, with no particular point except to bombard the viewer with information. It expresses the idea that we don't know where we are. Hopkins went on to say that many contemporary artists, instead of inventing their own imagery, scavenge from the real world. They try to find a new angle on what already exists. As Americans, we are rethinking what we thought we knew. Old ways of doing things and of making art don't express who we are anymore. In the 1960s minimalism was confident and macho. It was industrial, cold and architectural. It searched for an absolute within the vocabulary of high modernism. By the turn of the century many artists, some of them female, took that vocabulary and made it more personal, irregular and idiosyncratic, claiming, "The cube is mine too." Downstairs in the main gallery, there is a minimalist monochrome piece made of eye shadow created by Rachel Lachowicz.
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