Thursday, March 15, 2007

Exhibit at American University

on Saturday, the 10th, i was lucky enough to be able to attend the current exhibit going on at the Katzen Arts Center.

This link leads to the page that lists the artists and the work that was on display.

i actually found some of the art to be rather disturbing. to such a point that i wanted to leave the exhibit. Duane Hanson has a display going on based off replications of real people. they are models cast from live people, painted with eerie accuracy, dressed in clothes, and then put in natural everyday poses. i literally spent 45 seconds watching the one at the entrance, a painter, to see if he was going to breath. i thought maybe it was performance art.

Stanley Lewis, a renowned landscape artist had a couple pencil drawings that i found to be absolutely amazing. he had layered up drawing paper, probably 6-10 sheets thick, and then carved away the images, and then drew in pencil over the carvings. almost like a relief carving. it lent an amazing level of third dimensionality to the artwork. his paintings of landscapes, mainly urban backyards, were a little less appealing to me. the color choice was riotous. they featured very neon greens and oranges, combined with the usual landscape colors, applied with a very thick stroke to create a canvas covered with up to a half inch of paint.

there were three other major artists on display, along with a few miscellaneous artists gathered in the glass work collection. Robert Brady's sculptures were fairly interesting, consisting of a very, in my opinion, africanish style of sculpture based around angels. Richard Cleaver's work was also kind of interesting. it was a lot of sculpture, box like art made with very shiny jewel/gold materials, and a lot of dot painting. finally Madeleine Keesing had a collection of her paintings on display, but i did not spend a lot of time looking at those.

overall it was nice to be able to visit a museum!

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