ART SHOW REVIEW 1

Last night I attended the UCSB, Department of Art, Honors Thesis Show entitled, Whenever You Are, We Are Already Then. The show consisted of an array of art forms, from interactive installation pieces, to pen and ink displays. The first piece that I saw, by Julian Alexander Scalia, entitled Telemodelectriver (CRT’s, Conduit, Oil Drums, Video), held my attention the most, and was my personal favorite. This piece was in a separate room that the rest of the show, in a sense, isolating the experience of the viewer, allowing the piece to stand out with its own unique display. Inside the dark, ominous room stood a cloudily transparent tarp dome (similar to a yurt) with a small entrance. Inside the dome was a cylindrical stack of oil drums with many T.V. screens around it at different heights and sizes. On each of these screens was something different. From a close up of a mouth (with a seemingly wet mustache) laughing and smiling, to screens with random flashes of posed, nude body images, to images of men with stockings over there faces (like criminals might wear) flashing with a lone hanging light-bulb, to screens with plain static, the video images gave the piece an extremely eerie, even sinister feel, taking the viewer out of his or her comfort zone. Making the experience even tenser was the amplified, scratchy and screechy sounds coming from the speakers outside of the dome, contributing to a truly encompassing sensory experience for the viewer.

      Another set of pieces that I enjoyed in the show, which contrasted greatly to the aforementioned installation, was that of Lillian Edwards. This Untitled set of pieces consisted of a set of fine, intricate pen and ink drawings of various plants that she, the artist, found along her walks by Sands beach. Some of the pieces were easily distinguished as plants, however, many were extremely obscure and abstract. When talking to the artist, she elaborated on her ideas of blowing up tiny pieces natural objects (like plants), and seeing how the difference in size, and scale affects how people interoperate what the objects are. The differences in types of works in this show made for a slightly broken up, yet fresh and stirring experience.