"Monopochess" would be a good way to describe the flavor of the installation that greets you on your entrance into Tufts' Sesquicentennial alumnae exhibit. Monopoly houses grace a giant, mirrored and matte chessboard. Fish heads and bread loaves are gathered in piles around the board and scattered over it, and rows of heads stare angrily over at houses gathered on the opposite side.
Ann Sullivan, a student employee at Aidekman, wonders what it could mean. We discuss: Battle over the American Dream, or longing for Jesus as the real estate agent savior, supplying them not only with endless supplies of bread and fish, but the perfect house?
For this exhibition, Tufts called on artistic alumnae who graduated from the joint MFA/Tufts program to submit five of their best pieces created in the past 24 months. Chosen as judges were Edmund B. Gaither, director of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Elizabeth Stevens, manager of collections at the Salander-O'Reilly Gallery in New York, and Miles Unger, contributor to the New York Times. They looked at more than 500 entries to come up with just 45, enough to fill the halls of the Tufts Gallery and more.
Although most of the artists selected were graduates from the MFA program, there were a few exceptions. One artist, Philip Arcidi, graduated from the engineering school and innovated his way into the exhibit. His paintings are intaglio, usually made by raising strips on metal. Arcidi substituted plastics instead, melting them and then dribbling ink over the paintings. The result is layers of ink drawings that look like nightmarish black and white cartoons, insubstantial monsters with gaping jaws bear down on tiny poodle-like figures scurrying across the paper.
A favorite of one of the students working there, "Beach Status," portrays the bust of a woman who appears to be wearing a bikini. But upon closer examination it is the only tan lines from a bikini. The woman is represented with sagging lines, neck, thick thighs - but her breasts remain erect.
There is another installation piece on the exhibit's top floor, created by the South African artist Sophie Ainslie. The work, called "Labyrinth of Commercial Prophets," is made of a half-rolled up floor carpet made out of chicken wire, and the holes are stuffed with junk mail catalogues. It's one of many commentaries, so popular among contemporary artists, on the US of Advertising.
This is Ainslie's second recent exhibit at Tufts. The last one consisted of multiple copies of these pieces hung from the ceiling and slowly spiralling in mid-air.
There are two video installations, one on the top floor and another on the lower floor of the exhibit. The first, Confessions at a Military Camp is a five-minute video on the joys of independence, narrated by a high voiced black and white cartoon girl who ruminates on whether 'tis better to be a "Prophet from another world," or learn to go with the flow and take your own showers. She suddenly turns colors at boot camp, probably created with the good-smelling Magic Markers that we all used to love in grade school.
The drawings flow into each other, as well as the voice, which narrates in one long sentence until the end. Watching this film is something like watching a five-minute animated version of Ulysses confessed by a Southern eight-year old on Jerry Springer.
The other movie, White Flight, shows a couple driving through the snow and arguing. It is a shorter, silent film interrupted only by a climactic burst of noise.
Another highlight is an oil piece "Untitled" by Carlos Stuart. One might name it "The Mad Bus Ride," as a huge white figure stands behind a yellow bus, holding it up off the road; black figures dance and sing inside the bus while it is driven by a white figure. Its New Orleans-reminiscent feel is expressed by the choice of colors and material: red, black, yellow, bits of oil sticking up out of the painting, a thick layer of raw thoughts jumping out at the viewer.
Other paintings and sculptures include "(Snake) Belly," a magnified view of a man's huge Buddha belly, smooth and hairless with a faded snake tattoo; "Magnetolectric," a color ink drawing of a bunny rabbit in a dress, surrounded by blood-red guns pointed at her; and "Dimensed Lines in Search for Meaning and Tumesence," mixed media that features red and green worm-blobs swarming together on the canvases.
John Anderson's work includes a wooden band of left hands hanging together from a lavender canvas, creating shadows that bring the hands together in a permanent hand-shaking. Don't miss the series of Seuss-like sculptures, all spikes, brushes, and thimble handles with names like "Brush Off," "Don't Turn Me On," and "Turn Me Around."
The exhibition, which runs until Dec. 9, offers a wide variety of painting and sculptural styles, though most with a contemporary feeling or commentary. So celebrate the Sesquicentennial this Homecoming weekend, and thee to the Gallery to see the green hanging bead tree. I'll let you discover just what exactly that is for yourself .
