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Cara Ober
Baltimore Art ExaminerCara Ober is a celebrated local artist and professor who offers her readers an insider's glimpse of the Baltimore arts scene, as well as a guide to what's ahead.
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Showing entries for Category: Maryland-Institute-College-of-Art
MICA Thesis II
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by Cara Ober, Baltimore Art Examiner
"Looks Like Art, Smells Like Art... I think it's Art: Thesis Two at MICA" by Cara Ober
The first works I noticed were by Ben Steele. From a distance, I thought they were huge digital prints. They have the look of overexposed photos, with odd light flares and reflections on glass. On closer inspection, I realized these are paintings on canvas. Imposing in size and rich in surface detail, these paintings are immediately appealing because their craft is a mystery. How did he make these? What convoluted photo references does he use? Why do these paintings refer to printing colors in their titles? (Each of the three above are called Garden - Cyan, Garden - Yellow, and Garden - Magenta, the three colors for printing in color). I think Steele's unusual paintings successfully bridge the gap between traditional landscape painting and a contemporary works which use digital print media - and invigorate the genre of landscape painting by merging it with modern technology. These works employ a Bonnard-esque color scheme, contrasting pure and muddy hues, and have lots of surprising moments to experience, up close, all of which are rewarding. They are incredibly cohesive and resolved without being boring, and are confounding in so many ways.
Ben Steele's 'Garden - Magenta'
Veering over from Steele, one next moves to the cut paper installations of Jimmy Joe Roche. Impressive in their obsessive detail, bold color, and size, there is a sense of a graffiti hipness and also the artist's pleasure in creating the work. Roche mentioned in the show catalogue that his works are going to New York for a solo show and, of all the works in this show, they appear the most Chelsea-ready. I like these works, but I am also put off by their smugness and their symmetry. They are beautiful and overwhelming, but I am not sure, besides a visual pleasure, if there is any substance underneath. I don't see any mistakes or questions in the artist's thought process, but maybe I am not looking closely enough. Is it simply enough to make imposing and labor-intensive works or do they need to say something more?
Close-up of Roche's cut paper piece.
Paintings by Michael Burmeister and sculpture by Christopher LaVoie round out the rest of the space in the downstairs gallery. Burmeister's paintings compete with Roche and Steele for attention by virtue of their equally large size and bold, super-comic color schemes, but seem to have more in common with Roche's cut paper pieces. Primary color and twisting masses of rubbery cartoony superhero bodies are fleshy yet flat. Their allover compositions and calligraphic contour lines explode over the canvasses, but could stand some contrasting shadows or neutrals for an even more dramatic effect.
LaVoie's quiet installation/sculpture, made up of a dining room table covered in fine china and speakers, a wooden box, and a snow globe, is easy to overlook in the midst of all of this visual 'noise.' This piece is interactive - the 'vewer' picks up the snow globe and it causes the table to vibrate at different frequencies, with the china making different subtle musical notes. It is oddly simple, yet engaging.
LaVoie's quiet installation/sculpture, made up of a dining room table covered in fine china and speakers, a wooden box, and a snow globe, is easy to overlook in the midst of all of this visual 'noise.' This piece is interactive - the 'vewer' picks up the snow globe and it causes the table to vibrate at different frequencies, with the china making different subtle musical notes. It is oddly simple, yet engaging.
Upstairs, Jessie Lehson's 'Healing Environments' is a soothing and subtle counterbalance. Works made with simple, natural materials - dirt, earth, charcoal, and wood - offer an approach that seems, pardon my pun, much more grounded than some of the other works. These works are almost so minimal you dismiss them at first, but, if you take a moment to listen, quietly and sensitively speak in a voice that is clear and distinct. References to mandalas, ancient healing materials, as well as simple geometric designs speak to us in the same way these images have spoke to past cultures and civilizations. You have to work a little bit to understand and feel included in these works, but the work is definitely rewarded with an inner feeling of peace and calmness.
Lehson's homemade charcoals and pastels
Lehson's room of four sqares, each made with finely sifted dirt from different places.
I have to say I enjoyed the black and white photography of Christine Tran. She painted the gallery walls a dark blue, so that the white-framed photos really popped off the walls and also made her show cohesive. Under some of the rather traditional prints there were scrawled messages in white chalk, which added an interesting dimension to the photos. There is a richness and a subtext threading through all the work, despite disparate subjects and approaches, as if each shot required a different thought process and the artist submitted to that. There's no formula here - some of Tran's images are almost Siskind in their abstract flatness, while others have a Diane Arbus focus on a lone figure. There is also a sense of editing here that benefits the works as a whole, a sense that Tran shoots constantly and then whittles it down to the very strongest works. I appreciate it when an artist uses their medium's specific capabilities and Tran does this, achieving a documentary-yet-fantasy effect that reveals and conceals in the right percentages.
Elena Victoria Patino's wall of skin tones rounds out the group. Like a scientist, Patino experimented with her own perception of her skin color and other's skin colors, and then compared her findings to other's perception of skin tones, presenting her findings in a multicultural wall installation. From a distance it looks like the Cover Girl skin tone chart of foundation colors, but up close, the labels explain and illustrate her concept. We all perceive each other, and ourselves, differently. I think that other scientists should take a lesson from Patino and express their research visually, as well as in the traditional, verbal way.
Patino's row of 'them by them' which contrasts with a row of names of individuals at the top of the chart.
Patino charts her own skin tones, as perceived by others.
Topics: Maryland Institute College of Art
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