The thought of fine art brings to mind stuffy white museums, lavish oil paintings and upper-class elegance, but the exhibition Tell Me I'm Pretty broke that stereotype with a humble twist.
Malt liquor and donuts were served for the attendees' enjoyment on opening night at the Center for the Arts.
The display featured artwork by nine first-year Master of Fine Arts students, ranging in medium from oil paintings and visual computer programs to avant-garde Mason jar MP3 players and thrift store living room recreations.
The friendly atmosphere on opening night drew a sizable crowd of curious faces, perhaps because of the booze and donuts, but more than likely because of the exceptional work by the artists.
The gallery was split in half by a wall in the center of the room. The first half of the gallery featured Candy Girling's "Within the Sad City ... Simply Breathing," a colorful piece composed of suspended Washi-paper disks and computer fans, which reacted to passerby movement with an array of sensors.
On the same side, Mark Snyder's "Confessions upon a Father's Death," an invention of wood, twine, amplifiers, speakers and MP3 players vacuum-sealed into Mason jars, hung nearby from the ceiling.
"[The artwork is] all incredibly interesting," said Josh Erni, a freshman architecture major who was in attendance. "[Snyder's piece] caught my attention. The point is that the sound doesn't carry. It's pretty incredible. If you look closely, you can actually see the vibrating speakers."
On the adjacent wall hung Joshua Unikel's "Zoloft; Anxiety," a large ink-on-paper rendition of a prescription sheet for the anti-depressant medication Zoloft.
The attention to detail in Unikel's piece was remarkable. The exhaustive deliberation and tediousness in the exact shades of a prescription sheet - signature and official state imprint included - seemed almost comical. If the point of the piece was to represent anxiety disorder, then it was a remarkable representation, providing viewers a glimpse into anxiety and depression.
On the other side of the wall, under Augystina Droze's "Spawning," a suspended migration stream of white woven cotton salmon, sat Heather Kurdyla's living room.
"This is my first time doing any installation work so I thought I'd give this a go to try something new," Kurdyla said. "I took everything from my living room and brought it into the gallery. Most things I collect are from the 1940s to 1960s, so this is just a collection of my stuff."
She titled her piece "Living Room, Apt. Number 7."
The re-creation of her living room at home in eight-square-feet looked like the inside of an antique store with worn oriental rugs, thick cushioned couches, taxidermy birds, deer antlers and dozens of oil-paint portraits of unknown faces on the wall.All that was missing was a tray of warm chocolate chip cookies with offensive perfume and air fresheners.
"I want people to come into the space and go through things and through my books," Kurdyla said. "It's just playing with that idea of privacy and what I want to make public."
On a shabby nightstand, next to the heavily used blue Salvation Army couch, sat Heather's laptop with a live video feed to her empty living room at home.
Beyond Kurdyla's thrift-store living room hung Elizabeth Labarge's "Lamaze" and "Antimony," both in charcoal and oil-on-paper canvases.
One of the pieces depicted a C-section operation by beautiful nurses in classically inspired gowns, with a singular burst of color in their blue latex medical gloves. The other work illustrated a bizarre scene of two naked figures: an animalistic looking female with a banana in her hand and a male character feverishly brushing the female's hair amidst a darkly shaded background.
Further into the gallery, Su Yang had a couple of oil paintings on display. Yang is focusing on feminism in her Master's study and wanted to show a different side of the female image.
One of her pieces depicted the back of a large woman with intricate oil-paint brush strokes against a dark background.
"I wanted to show the female as very powerful and their strong side," Yang said.
Yang's second painting illustrated a downtown, skyward 42nd Street view of the bright reds and oranges of New York City at sunset, framed by the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan. She was inspired after traveling to New York City this past winter.
"I took a lot of pictures at night of the sky," Yang said. "It's a very exciting life, but it still makes me feel very stressed. When I look at the sky, there are a lot of buildings, [but] there are no stars."
The painting seemed very minimal and expressionist from afar, but upon closer examination, the remarkable detail and sheer beauty of the brush strokes and color choices become apparent, shifting from the simple to the profoundly breathtaking.
Throughout the showing, Droze's suspended salmon piece hanging from the ceiling politely directed traffic within the gallery, while spectators lounged amidst Kurdyla's living room and gazed inquisitively into Snyder's Mason jars.
Although it's unlikely they will be serving Colt 45 and Olde English any time soon, other fine art museums should take after the CFA with 40 oz. for all.
Tell Me I'm Pretty will be on display through April 27 at the CFA.
Email: arts@ubspectrum.com
