Okay, so my last post said that I'd tell you what I thought was good and what made me want to claw my eyes out at the current exhibition in the Mason Gross gallery. Nothing actually made me want to claw my eyes out, but there were some things that were just more visually appealing than others. I'll start with the bad. On the whole Robert Nava's paintings were interesting. They were childlike and yet that didn't bother me. It was like a child had been given a huge canvas on which the could make a picture. I've heard people say " My child could do that" in reference to some artworks that appear primitive. And of course someone will retort that a child couldn't do that, because they couldn't think about composition, foreground/background relationships, etc. I kind of disagree, the reason a child couldn't do something like Robert Nava is because no parent would buy/ make a giant canvas for their child to paint on. True, their are parents who want to stimulate their child's growth, but most will settle for crayons and copy paper. Back to the point, I think a child could make a fairly decent painting if given the opportunity. Robert Nava's paintings are depictions of everyday things, through the lens of a child. My real problem is with this painting below:

    Okay, it's a police officer or a mail person ( trying not to be sexist) riding a cow, I think. But that's it. Where's the house in the background, wheres the  grass hastily put in with green scribbles. All his other paintings are more complicated in the fact that the canvas is filled. Maybe it's just me ( it probably is), but this painting to me feels the weakest of the group because to me it looks like something a child wouldn't do. I have a notebook from when I was in first grade. It's filled with scribbles of superheroes and Power Rangers ( cringing). In all of these drawings, I managed to make it feel like the superheroes were somewhere. Even if I just scribbled something from the superheroes to stand on. This to me just feels like a sketch for a larger painting. I can tell what it is, then I just move on, nothing holds me to make me want to look at it longer. Wow, glad that's over, hope I wasn't too rough. Despite the one bad apple I did enjoy the rest of Robert Nava's paintings, this one  painting just brought me down.

The only other painting in the show that I didn't like/ and or didn't understand was this:


I really don't know what to say about Katie Herzog's painting.The background is the most interesting thing, the mix of blues and purples and what looks to me like a footprint. It looks like someone started playing hangman and the lunch bell rang and everyone left before saying any letters.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the lecture in which Katie Herzog was the speaker, so I don't know what she was trying to do or say in this painting. I don't want to speculate and come off as a ignorant jerk ( too late haha), so instead I'm going to move on.

My two favorite parts of the exhibition were the works of Aaron Gilbert and Lui Shtini. Aaron Gilbert's figures have an odd manaquinesque ( it's a word) quality about them. I f someone had just cut open my chest, I'd eitheir be screaming bloody murder or be dead and a little more loose. All the figures have an odd calmness to them, despite one being on fire and another being stabbed.



 The glossines of the surface of the painting and how rendered everything is also something I liked. Not to say that all the figures are neccesarily realistic, it's just that they have a computer generated quality that's interesting.
Lui Shtini's work also has a highly rendered, computer quality. All the works were interesting, the the painting at the bottom was the one that I looked at the longest, so it's my favorite.

The condoms in a petri dish are simple, then you have these black specks and you wonder what the fuck is that? Is it something growing outside the petri dish, some new lifeform? Is it casting it's own shadow or is it staining the surface of whatever it's on? I'm still scrtatching my head but I like how it gets you to step closer and try to see what's happening.

Well, that's all she wrote. I could have went further, but this is a blog and not a full length feature article. Next time I'll have another update of my studio and tell you all how my midterm critique went! See you next week, same bat time, same bat channel!