Visiting Faculty Exhibit Art

By BRIANNE CORCORAN

CONTRIBUTING Writer



In its attempt to address issues that concern us today, the Visiting Faculty Exhibit at the Carpenter Center, on display through October 23, combines digitally altered stills, free-standing sculptures, dark animations, and an interpretation of a 1976 film. It is, in the words of special projects manager Tracy Blanchard, a show that “contemplates the intersections between contemporary art and contemporary technologies to address contemporary concerns.”

The five professors being showcased—Gregory Halpern, Sanford Biggers, Taylor Davis, Catherine Lord, and David Lobser—bring unique viewpoints from all around the country. “I think [the Visiting Faculty Exhibit] gives an opportunity for students as well as other faculty to get to know the visiting faculty and have a chance to see how their minds work,” Biggers says.

Halpern, a Buffalo native who draws on his hometown for inspiration, says that his digital stills, “Untitled (With Violence Removed),” are about how we come to view our landscape. “I think that we’ve come to expect terror and the unknown and the unprecedented. These video games stills seem absurd with the soldiers and the act of violence, but when I removed the violence the scene actually seemed much scarier,” he says. “Since 9/11, our imagination has unfortunately become increasingly vivid, for better or for worse.”

Davis’s “Appleknockers” sits in the middle of a couch arrangement ready for contemplation. “I found a piece of plywood with enormously huge knots, and I thought they were really funny,” she says. “I thought they looked like huge breasts and huge cartoon eyes.” Davis, who teaches at both Bard College and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, moved forward with the humorous sculpture by contemplating how one contextualizes imagery. “Whatever frame you use changes the image,” she says.

Davis’s piece of plywood is bordered by mahogany and covered with red glass to elevate the value of the imagery. Davis says that this frame is meant to comment on conformity within society. “Consumer culture has people so framed because the particular thing we want is first made but then sold to us in a particular context—a concept then chosen by the company.”

While Halpern’s art was influenced by contemporary concerns from the outset and Davis says that her sculpture only reflected modern day issues, Biggers found inspiration in the 1976 film “Network,” a movie that portrays the pursuit of power in American television, and from which he remade three scenes.

“It is a dark and black comedy from the 70s, yet it is very relevant of the issues today,” Biggers says. “I think this piece, for me, is about the presence the media has in our lives.” While Biggers believes that the media uses people to gain power, he also thinks people use media to gain power.

The 2008 elections and slumping economy have helped make the pursuit of power ever-present. “In terms of the debate and the election, I think it is important to look backwards in order to see where we are going forwards,” he says. “And although ‘Network’ was a joke in the 1970s, it became a reality in the 2000s. If we don’t learn from our past, we will make the same mistakes in the future.”

Though, as Davis insists, what makes this show so unique is that it was determined by educational choices rather than by a single curator, each piece nonetheless reflects an issue facing our contemporary society–whether conformity, the influence of media, or the danger of our own imagination.