UMMA: Stop Making Sense; Constructs and Narratives, Real and Imagined
“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” ~Pablo Picasso
UMMA will be holding the three-part exhibition consisting of the three-part work Affecting the Audience by Anthony Discenza, Aurélien Froment, and Dora García. Each artist contributed one work of art—a blank screen which presents a textual evaluation of the audience in real-time (an exhibit I felt needed its own separate review, which can be found here), a dark room featuring an audio track of a series of google search results for the query “and the effect is…” read aloud, and an HD broadcast of a jellyfish floating around in a tank. All three pieces are particularly challenging because they call into question what an artist’s responsibility is towards their audience—they’re all designed to confuse and trick the viewer rather than present a coherent narrative.
I had the unique privilege to attend a post-exhibit discussion with three art and design school professors, Heidi Kumao, Matt Kenyon and Melanie Manos and SAC professor Terri Sarris. This discussion by artists who themselves have contributed to museum installations was particularly illuminating into the strengths of the exhibit and the strategies employed.
In order to “decode” this three part exhibition, a useful key is understanding the concept of an unreliable narrator—too often do we assume everything in a museum is objective, undeniably true. Unfortunately, this is never the case. The artist’s own life experiences, audience expectations for what art should be, and museum standards all limit what is allowed in a museum.
For example, one core assumption all 3 exhibits deconstruct is that a museum is a designated zone for “painted art”—when we go to museums, most of us expect to see lots of paintings and not much else. Anything that isn’t a painting is automatically a wildcard. But why? (I’m being rhetorical here, I can’t say I have a satisfying answer, rather I think this question is worth asking).
So I think to anyone who goes to check this difficult exhibit out, approach it a little differently than you would a standard set of paintings or photographs. See the exhibit as a series of questions about why museums are set up the way they are. Hence my opening quote—challenging or confusing pieces of art are often meant to force the audience to feel uncomfortable or unsatisfied, because this struggle or dissatisfaction forces the audience not only to reconsider their expectations, but to re-evaluate them.
