Incognito

This past Saturday, I was originally planning to check out the Japanese prints exhibition in Toledo. I’ve studies for my exam ahead. I’ve found a car and a friend who could drive me there. And I’ve informed everybody around me how excited I was to finally be able to see this exhibit…but, wait, Helicon was gonna present a student art exhibit on the same day! And I definitely should help out to set up! Fortunately, my benign friend promised me that he would drive me there during Thanksgiving break, so sorry to disappoint you guys, but let’s just put those Japanese prints aside for one more week. And, here comes the coolest art show, presented by Helicon: Incognito!

Different from the one we held last year at the Warren Robbins Gallery in Art & Design Building, this year’s exhibition took place in a lovely house. This little compromise in location (cuz it was too late for us to reserve any campus gallery spaces) turned out to be a huge success. Artworks, music, a constant stream of visitors, and a more relaxing atmosphere—that’s all we could expect for a remarkable night.

One of the most eye-catching and interesting pieces of the exhibition—trust me, all of them are just fantastic!—5/13, is a installation featuring a collection of jars. Each jar contains certain liquid that represents the artist’s mood of a certain day in May 2013, which is indicated by the date on the label on the cap. It impressed me at first glance because I’ve seen an awesome installation which also featured a series of jars in MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Arts, Detroit) last year during a field trip with Helicon kids. The artist was Kristen Pieroth, and what she did was putting the residual liquids of boiled books into jars. All books that were boiled were the big names like Huckleberry Finn’s Adventure and Pride and Prejudice (I remember? Not sure…).

Anyway, let’s look at these “diary jars”. Jasmine tea. Chips immersed in water. A paper calla lily. It’s enjoyable to see how the artist’s subtle feelings are embodied by liquids of different colors and transparency. And since he/she doesn’t tell us the actual emotions, we could only guess or try to interpret the meanings of the liquids by our own cognition, and there are no correct answers. Moreover, some of them got opaque or volatilized over the past several months, and the objects inside either shrank or corroded. To be honest, this straightforward and candid presentation of the passage of time thrilled me.