Thursday, December 11, 2014

Art343 Exhibition Review/Artist Talk

Day of the Dude - Exhibition Review
On the first floor of the Church of Fine Arts building there was the Day of the Dude art show. There were multiple artists that collaborated on this exhibition. All of the pieces are themed day of the dead. Each artwork has some sort of skull on it. The pieces are a combination of sculpture and paintings. The biggest piece that stood out to me was a quite large painting by Michael Sarich. I watched him create this piece in my painting class. He used a stencil to put his signature skull on his brightly colored background. It seemed like he was playing with the innocent girl devil in the background and the giant skull meaning death.
            The other piece that stood out to me was the twelve baby skulls hanging on the wall. There were six on top and six on bottom. They were hung in perfect alignment. Each skull was slightly different. It’s unusual that you see baby skulls because adult sugar skulls are so popular. Each one has some sort of heart etched into the heads and some have an inverted cross. Inverted crosses used to be known for Christianity but lately it has taken on the meaning of anti-Christianity. I am not sure what the artist was trying to get across with these. There were also boxes attached to the walls, which almost looked like a shrine to the dead. There were many pictures hanging from the work and little religious symbols on the top of the boxes. The colors were very bright and looked like a celebration to the dead.

The Yes Men - Artist Talk

The Yes Men are to guys that have become an activist duo throughout the world. They target social issues in their work. These two men have a lot of different websites that they have created to look like big companies websites but they have spoofed them. They started to get recognition to have interviews and be on television to speak about what they were doing. In the movie, they impersonated individuals that they disliked in big corporations. They want to get to the bottom of why the world gives more power to the market system instead of giving it to something else that could have more importance. The Yes Men get away with a lot for posing as people that would be big in the industry. It is so interesting to me that these people that are at these conventions don’t even really listen to the speaker. They would have been found out much quicker if people paid more attention to the speeches that these people are giving. One of the movements that stood out to me was the Survivaball. People dressed up in this inflatable ball costume to hit corporations that where threatening the climate. The claimed that it was “a self-contained living system for surviving disasters caused by global warming.” This got shut down immediately. They have used these Survivaball outfits in multiple places that they took action on. I think that the world needs more people like these Yes Men. Big corporations have control over everything which isn’t always what the world needs, and in most cases it’s what the world never needs.

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