Mission Gallery Evaluation
In the Mission Gallery of Art we were treated to a series of pieces centred on ideas involving degrading of matter and the blurring of an image. Much of the pieces would vary from portrait to landscape and gave of at least the illusion that they were coloured entirely in black and white due to the red lighting in the gallery. One piece for example was an image of “The Thinker” the statue sculptured by Auguste Rodin. Though due to the lighting the image is barely visable until you examine the piece very closely, literally inviting you to think about the image you see. Other images in the gallery were of rather simple ideas and images such as a scene of greenery or human portraits, which have been corroded and subdued, with only a certain percentage of the image being visible. The pieces therefore are dark in color and difficult to place.
With these images your eye line is particularly focused on the non-corroded parts of the piece. For example one of the pieces was of that of a portrait of a woman but with much of the image corroded. The great contrast in what should be life, color and vibrancy is highly noticeable in each piece and brings a sense of darkness and mystique to the piece. This results in the texture being almost unreal veering into an uncanny valley type of feel. Much of the figures in the pieces are featured more in the back and midground with the degrading decaying effect brought forward and exposed in the foreground. In some of the images involving people, the decay and erosion will often spread to involve the figures face.
The way that I interpret these pieces feels like the artist is attempting to create a very dark and ominous mood. The literal decaying of the images could be seen as a real life parallel to actual decay and showing perhaps death and detereation are an ever present and evokes fears of mortality, vulnerability and fallibility. A piece of art can also be used to tell some sort of narrative, and by fracturing the image in such a way it creates something of an enigma code, disallowing us to place the work under any sort of narrative context or find a relatable journey within the piece. Thus there is an emptiness to the work and an absence compounding in the absence of light and a fully realised image. As such it feels as if the artist is not showing us their hand with us as the viewer, perhaps almost intentionally leaving us to craft our own interpretation as to what the artist wants us to see.
I feel the decay however and the black and white colouring does somewhat root the story in the past as it would be hard to envision this level of deteration taking place in a more modern context. This does give the work a rather old world type of feel almost reminiscent of a by gone Victorian world that is now gone and been destroyed and ravaged by time. The image of the old woman in one of the pieces is a good example of this through a literal old person decaying evokes a sense of the old world decaying.
To conclude and evaluate I choose to focus on this peace because it felt most evocative to me. The clash between the woman and the degrading picture quality evokes a strong sense of deprivation and emotional loss through the dark colours and look of misfortune on the woman’s face. It at times even could symbolise burning with the way the decay permeates through the image, which does not seem to be something we would associate with being man made and more the product of an environmental or natural process. The image is also rather appealing to me as it draws closer to my type of aesthetic being darker and provocative over the fun and enjoyable nature others would gravitate to and feels more like a work of art. Naturally therefore I tend to prefer Provocation to entertainment. I also think it would appeal to others with an interest in the arts and would be worth visiting and coming to your own interpretation on.
