Week 8

Today, our class spent a day at the Carnegie International Museum of Art in Pittsburgh to see some of the fantastic installation exhibits on display. It was my second trip to Pittsburgh, and my first visit to any of the museums in the city, so everything was new to me, but there were a few pieces in particular that stood out to me personally.

Right up the stairs was a video by Mark Lecky called Pearl Vision. It focused on a snare drum being played by a man with red pants. The rhythms he played on the snare acted like computer code, and the patterns triggered human like sounds. The voice usually said either “on” or “off”, and had a sort of sensual tone to its voice. The video repeatedly showed the man flick a switch on the snare drum on and off, and the music grew more intense until eventually the man’s clothing disappeared, and both the sound and the video became a bit more distorted. Overall, the video made me feel uncomfortable, but it also provoked a lot of interesting ideas.

At the start of the video, when the man in red pants played a simple rhythm on the snare drum, my first impression was that the rhythm was catchy. The voice that sounded whenever the snare was hit had a slightly sexual connotation, but not one that I thought too hard about. It wasn’t until the music and rhythm intensified, the clothes disappeared and the video was slightly distorted, almost as if the snare was melding with the man, that I began to feel uncomfortable.. For me, the video seemed to represent our society’s intimate relationship with technology – tech has a hand in everything we do, we post our lives online and depend on the internet for information. The world has what could almost be called a lustful obsession with technology as we look for the newest model, the latest update, the most recent news. We have an incessant desire for immediacy. In fact, we have come to expect it.

The series of pieces by Guo Fengyi drew me in immediately. The artist, a mother of four, began painting and drawing without any sort of formal training. She applied I Ching and Quigong, both practices “rooted in philosophy, martial arts, and medicine and combining breath, movement and meditation to achieve balance and a calm, mindful state” (Carnegie display description). Using these techniques, she sort of traced along the human body, following its flow of energy, flow of thoughts, and flow of blood circulation using colored ink on rice paper. The pieces are very tall, but not very wide, and the elegant marks made to the pages look almost calligraphic. It was of no surprise to me that meditation played a part in the creation of these pieces. There is a sort of peaceful, flowing tone about them that attracts the eye. Some of them looked clearly like people with content, untroubled expressions. Others were more abstract, but had the same relaxing flow to them. They looked to me the way meditation feels, particularly the black ink pieces. They left me with a positive feeling.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the Pedro Reyes exhibit! We had discussed his work in class, but I had assumed that it was simply an example of installation work. The violent weaponry transformed into musical instruments was fun to watch online, but was even more incredible in person. For me, the idea that such negative, violent objects can be used to create stunning art and sound is incredibly inspirational.

The pieces throughout the museum triggered a wide array of responses in me, and it was interesting to analyze why objects or images conjured up the feelings that they did. It was all well worth the trip, and I’m very happy that our class took the time to do this.