Crit Session Part 2

Jennifer Frias Project Crit Sessions happened a couple of weeks ago, a project of which I was a part of.  The project is basically this: have a group of non-art people (people who have not studied art in depth, do not know art history, and do not speak "art speak") to critique, at length, art pieces.  The artists get to witness the critique (I took lots of notes myself) but are not allowed to respond until the end.  She has done this project with Cal State Fullerton students, and several other local (So. Cal) schools' MFA programs.  Part of what is going on is "an interrogation of the Institution" that institution being art school, as well as the lessor acknowledged hierarchies and unspoken laws that make the art world inaccessible by most.

Me photographing the whole room.  The critique is currently of Takeshi Kanemura's performance piece.  (He is standing with on the right.)

It is also bridging the gap between the artist and the viewer as the artist getting to see and hear the conversation, and in this case the non-art-professional's response to the work.  Sometimes we artists are so wrapped up in the art world that we fail to see the big picture, and the big references because we are only focusing on the ones that pertain to art.

This is a pic from the previous round.  It took place at my studio at CGU, right before I moved out after graduation.)

Jennifer records the critique and takes pictures, which then get compiled into an exhibition.  This crit session included two other students from Claremont Graduate University (CGU).  She has been showing the results at spaces close to where the school is, as a way to reference the locality that each institution has.  (i.e.: CGU as an institution will praise and condone certain things based on the value system of that school.)

An example of Henrique Oliveira's work.

This is part two because the recordings from part one unfortunately were not usable.  So I made a new piece and we had new people come and talk about it.  I had been dying to play with a method of construction that I saw artist Henrique Oliveira use.  He makes these large scale forms out of wood, making a frame out of PVC and then layering thin veneers on to to get organic curvy shapes.  I didn't go quite that far, but I wanted to play with the PVC frames with the wood.  I have these thin slat pieces left over from another project that would work perfectly, so I set out to try a new construction.

My piece for the crit.

The piece kind of grew on its own, and control fell whim to the material.  I wanted to reference the figure along with modernist minimalism.  I thought it was funny to make forms that in minimalism are simple and to make them wholly complicated by ways of construction and the resulting surface.

The critique was really good.  The thing I can remember most (without checking my notes) was a conversation they had about the possible gender of the sculpture.  BINGO!  While I don't nessecarily agree that I should be considered feminist because I'm a woman using "masculine" materials (Wood, metal, hardware, plastic) -it perpetuates a stereotype of those materials being masculine.  However I align with the postmodern concept of truth:  truth is perspective.  And my perspective is a combination of what I learned from my father and what I learned from my mother.  My mom taught me all kinds of crafts, and then later I was in girl scouts and learned even more.  My father does construction, and a lot of that he did where I could watch, and later help with.  I'm interested in this overall handiness as a way for me to create forms with a certain confidence in the reality of that object because of its construction.  I feel that the end result is quite balanced in that there is not a smooth blend of both, but that both sides meet up in tension.

Curator Jennifer Frias is in maroon sitting down and artist Takeshi Kanemura is leaning against the wall in the back.