Visual Arts – Page 45

PREVIEW: Nightcrawler

October 30, 2014October 30, 2014 Phillip Wachowiak

Nightcrawler is the untold (semi-fictional) dark side of Los Angeles crime journalism, where a photographer will do anything to get a good shot of a murder scene. Perfect for Halloween weekend? You better believe it.

Who: Jake Gyllenhaal in what looks to be another Oscar-worthy performance.

Where: Rave Cinemas and Quality 16 (both within 4 miles of Ann Arbor!)

When: Showings begin at Midnight on Thursday

Just look at that photograph. Marvel at the 30 pounds Gyllenhaal lost to start in this role, his bugged, creepy eyes. If you are into thrillers, crime journalism, or a clever alternative to a slasher flick, this may be the movie for you.

A trailer can also be seen here

REVIEW: The Life and Death of Gourmet Magazine Exhibition

October 28, 2014October 28, 2014 Phillip Wachowiak

This is featured post 1/∞ of my ongoing “Food as Art” quest.

Located on the 7th Floor of Hatcher Graduate Library, the climb alone is an impressive feat. However, upon arrival I was treated to a small, yet easily digestible display of the life span of one of America’s many gourmet food magazines.

Although the magazine itself ran until 2009, its look and feel was distinctly 1950s suburbia. At the beginning we are introduced to Earle MacAusland and Samuel Chamberlain, two of the people that started the magazine (both males!). MacAusland started the magazine with the quote “Good food and good living have always been a great American tradition.” Ah yes, mom’s meatloaf does hearken back to the days of yore.

More importantly, Samuel Chamberlain did the dirty work of traveling all over the world and making the content exciting. These weren’t simply recipes, but artfully crafted adventures of a fictional Burgundian cook, and ways of thinking about how food can be prepared and enjoyed. One of the coolest things about this exhibit was the assortment of spin-off books by contributors.

Like any art from past generations, the covers of these books alone offer a window into mid-20th century society. We have since evolved our caricatures of Russian people, and I would be shocked if I saw a font like that on a book cover today. I even saw The South American Gentleman’s Companion, featuring essentials such as “Exotic Cooking Book” and “Exotic Drinking Book.” Thankfully we have moved past the mysticism of Latin American society and we no longer refer to it as “exotic.” My favorite quote: “By making cookery a game, no a chore…you approach the kitchen exactly like a modern Columbus approaching unknown shores.” While this is funny in its own right, we continue to be inundated with hordes of travel cooking shows and superfoods like quinoa have taken the world by storm.

At its core, Gourmet, like any magazine, is about presentation.

Dozens of people worked countless hours to generate a product appealing to the eye, and each magazine hanging from the wall made a unique attempt to catch the viewer’s eye. Unlike a film or even a concert, you are free to roam around the room at will, leaning in to get a better look at the covers of the magazines. The Gourmet exhibit isn’t explicitly about cooking (it’s more about origins and lifespan), it is easy to get a sense of how people create their own pieces, then bring these together into a larger whole.

Announcement:

There is a special lecture on the exhibit, Tuesday, November 18 at 4 pm in Room 100 of the Hatcher Graduate Library

REVIEW: Detroit gallery crawl

October 26, 2014October 28, 2014 simoka 1 Comment

I spent this past Saturday enjoying what I can only think of as one of my favorite Saturdays in a long while. Through an event organized by the U of M’s Joe Levickas, a group of students were given a well-planned introduction to what Detroit’s art scene has to offer. In the morning we boarded a bus to downtown Detroit, given a map and some details about the galleries in the area, and released to explore the city. Here is a list of the galleries and their websites.

Signal Return
Red Bull House of Art
InnerState Gallery
Trinosophes
The Scarab Club
N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art
Detroit Artists Market
MOCAD
Review Contemporary Gallery
Dell Pryor Gallery
Lester Monts Hall

Below I’ll go into a little more detail about my experience at the galleries.

Signal Return

The first stop the bus made was at Detroit’s Eastern Market district. Crowded streets, covered produce markets, and busy local food joints were the first things I noticed. The Signal Return space was less than a block from the covered markets. Part printmaking studio, part store front, the space aims to preserve the craft of handset printmaking by offering instructional classes to selling prints made by artists. The space was really clean and the architecture of the space was as interesting as the art they were selling in the store. It was built in a renovated egg crate manufacturing building and preserves a lot of the original brick of the building. Large open windows line the store front making it more welcoming to passersby. Being right off the Eastern Markets there were lots of Saturday market goers around. The atmosphere reminded me of how much I love the community of a city. The upstairs of the building was closed when we visited, but occasionally features printmaking shows. The artistic director there mentioned that a lot of the type set and letter presses are taken up from local print making businesses that have closed down. She also educated us in a bit of the historical influence of printmaking and letterpress expressions on today’s vocabulary, such as the terms ‘uppercase’ and ‘lowercase’ which came from printmakers storing the uppercase letters in the upper level case and the lower case ones in the lower. Another

Afterwards, I treated myself to a scoop of chocolate and cherry amaretto ice cream from Mootown Ice Cream Shoppe, which I’d definitely recommend dropping by.

Trinosophes

I remember there was some jazz music playing in the background. It is a large, bright space with cement floors that has a small grouping of shelves that sat at the back, which house a random collection of old paperbacks ranging from poetry to communist texts to classical fictions. The entrance of Trinosophes is a cafe with just enough seats for patrons without overcrowding the space. The chairs were noticeable because they ranged from vintage wooden kitchen chairs to bright orange 80s style cushioned seats. Partitions divide the cafe off from the gallery space and served to blocked the view from one side to the other while still allowing sound to flow back and forth between the two areas. The current show is a collection of various old posters, which contained images about nearly everything from war propaganda to equal rights for the sexes to petitions supporting the rights of immigrants. I had only a few minutes in the space so I didn’t quite finish the reading the description for the opening, but from what I gathered the collection of posters had come from one man’s numerous political friends with packrat tendencies. Given more time, I would have liked to sit awhile and I have some coffee. Maybe next time.

Inner State Gallery

Two or three doors down from Trinosophes is Inner State Gallery. A smaller space, the gallery is currently hosting a solo show by artist, Tyree Guyton. Guyton, with his grandfather, began the Heidelberg Project. (A note on the Heidelberg Project: For those who aren’t familiar, the project started in 1986 as an outdoor art environment. Heidelberg street was transformed into a war torn neighborhood during the riots of the 60s. To protest, Guyton and his grandfather began painting the houses bright colors and arranging salvaged items into sculptures, turning the neighborhood around and reclaiming it through art making and re-appropriating it as a public space.) His show featured works on paper as well as old car hoods that had been scraped and burned by fire, and now hung up like canvases on the gallery wall. The warped nature of the hoods add to the disfigurement of each featured portrait. They were painted with bright colors and various shapes in place of facial features, and each portrait is of someone Guyton is acquainted with. He also had an interesting installation art work: a taped off square filled with standing, non-functioning vacuum cleaners, each painted in a solid coat of paint of a different color. It signifies a clear message about how the people assigned to clean up the city of Detroit are not performing their jobs.

Red Bull House of Art

The first floor of the Red Bull House of Art featured private studios for artists. The stairs off to the right take you down to what appears to be a dark brick tunnel but actually opens up to a low-ceilinged brick lounge and bar area, before leading you down a ramp to a large bright gallery. It is easy to feel like you’re trespassing on some abandoned basement before you realize that is a part of the charm of the space. The large basement is currently holding a show of four artists, some of them young and most of them from around the area. One of the artists featured futuristic mythological pieces painted in bright pinks and cyans. The feeling of contrast between such modern images against the unfinished brick structure of the gallery created for an all the more interesting experience.

Scarab Club

The Scarab Club is located in a building originally built in 1907. Taking the stairs to the gallery space on the second floor, you see a large fire place, piano, and decor that makes the room feel like a classic house in 1920s film set. The wooden beams on the ceiling of the house are engraved with the signatures of famous people like Diego Rivera, Marcel Duchamp, and Norman Rockwell. Below can be heard the tunes of a blues band performing in the gallery space below. Back upstairs, the current exhibition features a painter by the name of Sam Karres. His paintings took a lot of marks from impressionists. The history of the gallery space and thinking about all the people who had come through there made me want to sit awhile and just enjoy being there.
There were many galleries to see and not enough time. I would definitely consider checking back in with some of these spaces in the future. Certainly another weekend trip to Detroit is in order.

PREVIEW: The Life and Death of Gourmet – The Magazine of Good Living EXHIBITION

October 23, 2014October 28, 2014 Phillip Wachowiak

The joys of cooking need not remain behind the confines of kitchen walls, especially when you can explore the history of a major food magazine: Gourmet.

As the U of M library states “Gourmet illuminated the ‘best of the best’ in categories such as farm to table practices – long before it became fashionable, reviewed top restaurants and chefs, and highlighted the magical integration of fine food with sommeliers, growers, and artists.” In other words, they were the hipsters of food magazines.

Where: Hatcher Graduate Library, 7th Floor Special Collections

When: Now! until November 28th, 10 am – 5 pm each day. For the full schedule check this link.

Cost: Did you really think the library would charge you, a student? Of course not.

PREVIEW: Ryoji Ikeda’s superposition

October 20, 2014October 28, 2014 Tsukumo

Ryoji Ikeda’s superposition brings a Japanese visual and sound artist to prove that art and science can interact. As a part of UMS’s International Theater Series, Ikeda creates a show that combines “synchronized video screens, real-time content feeds, digital sound sculptures, and for the first time in Ikeda’s work, human performers.” (UMS.org)

When: Friday, October 31 at 8pm -and- Saturday, November 1 at 8pm

Where: Power Center for Performing Arts

Tickets range from $12-20 for students, with ID. If you are first-year or sophomore, you are eligible to go to an UMS performance for free thanks to Bert’s Tickets program. Read more about how to claim your Bert’s Ticket and/or use other Student Ticket deals here!

REVIEW: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

October 20, 2014October 28, 2014 simoka 1 Comment

There are many problems confronting modern society but one of them is the effect humans are having on the earth. The significance of this issue has not diminished since the time of director Hayao Miyazaki’s animated release of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984. The beauty of a harmonious relationship with nature is told through the story of Nausicaä, the young princess of a valley who relies on wind power and believes in the care of their people as much as the care of the forest and natural world which they rely on. The architecture of the valley is reminiscent of a medieval village from the stone castle and to the robes and cloth headdresses the women wear. Their seemingly feudal-age culture is contrasted by the use of sleek, white gliders which seem to emerge from a science fiction novel.

The earth has just emerged from an apocalyptic war between the humans and the toxic forest, which resulted in the extermination of human existence by the large, prehistoric beasts called, Ohms, from the forest. Nausicaä uses her own glider to swiftly travel from the valley to the distant toxic forest, where the poisonous gases and monstrous bugs come from. The neighboring cities believe that the forest needs to be eliminated for the safety of humanity from not only the bugs, but the diseases the forest spreads to the people.

Nausicaä strongly believes that the forest has the power to heal and that humans and the forest are meant to co-exist. She shares this belief with the people she encounters through her natural charm with the animals and the way she gains their trust without asking anything in return. She also raises her own secret garden in the castle where she’s managed a way to grow the plants of the forest in a non-poisonous way, in an attempt to prove that the danger lies not in the forest itself, but in the remnants of the war and the toll humans took on the forest. Through it all, she has faith that their will be understanding and it is that strength of conviction combined with the beautiful characters Miyazaki has drawn together that pull you into Nausicaä’s world where holding unwaveringly onto ones beliefs and remaining brave in the face of adversity is one of the most beautiful characteristics one can hold, in the world of Miyazaki or the real world as well.