The pulse is fast and frantic through the halls of the Fifth Year Exhibition at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. These works, the culmination of the fifth year certificate program that serves as a year of independent study, embody the harsh realities of the world today. They seem to be a response to the current visual, social and general states of society and the world today.
Each of the 12 artists on display here has spent the past five years immersed in the body of an art student. It is in this fifth year that they escape the confines of art school and start to define themselves as independent artists. This is the first sounding of their voices, and they are not keeping it down.
Timothy Andrew Kadish explores the world of kitschy pop culture references, but he goes in through the back door. His raw linen canvasses are like film stills from the missing reel of a childhood nightmare. Harold and his purple crayon negotiate a kid-lit post-apocalypse in "Harold: It's a Jungle Out There." Dr. Seuss' Sneetch floats by, along with enormous ethereal jellyfish and tiny characters that seem ripped right from the margins of a seventh-grade notebook. They all circle around a crudely rendered mushroom cloud.
The pieces ooze irony. His tossing icons from the innocent realm of childhood into the tempest of this swirling apocalyptic scene raise both eyebrows and interesting questions. Causing viewers to wonder where he's coming from, what life experiences brought him to the juncture at which he made this kind of creative choice.
Crislin Meshberg's work is visually stunning. It's almost as if one's eyes have to open wider to accommodate the intensity of color and the sheer passion with which his subjects accost the viewer. His most stunning pieces are highly saturated oil renderings of an exploding pomegranate in motion. There is a definite nod to the film still here, a form that rarely fails to please. The exploding pomegranate plays like the climax of a violent action movie, and it is an extremely exciting scene.
James Bellinger, on the other hand, makes an attempt at the same sort of visual confrontation, but he falls short. His collection of massive black velveteen canvasses seem to pay tribute to Jackson Pollock in a sense, but it's fairly weak. Each has a concrete title, like "Organs of the Body" or "Ships Returning Home." The image, however, is a crudely rendered spirit of what the title suggests. It's the visual equivalent of a cacophony of abrasive sounds that create an extremely vague representation of reality. It's also terribly unpleasant.
The installation piece by Angelica C. Vanasse is hidden in the back of the gallery, a small alcove outfitted with a curious piece. Standing inside the small room is like exploring the chambers of a beating heart. The walls are covered with what appear to be veins, with plastic tubing and tiny wires looped throughout for arteries. She uses all sorts of paper and paint as her media, but also tiny plant roots and sections of branches. It makes for an interesting combination of humanity and nature, organic and inorganic. Vanasse is commenting on the parallels that exist in nature and within humans, perhaps in response to the current state of the world and the rampant ignorance of this relationship.
There is so much energy packed into the layers of this show, the room almost vibrates. There seems to be a collective commentary on the fragility of the current state of things; what exists now is transient and needs to be documented in its fleeting moments of existence.
E. Colin Van Zwyndregt expresses the notion in his collection, which captures tiny ephemeral images in delicate charcoals and acrylics. It seems as if the clouds parted to momentarily reveal these images to him but only for an instant.
These artists are capturing the essence of here and now, which is important because it may be the only evidence of what exists currently. When it is all in the past, this artwork will remind us of what it was like. These 12 people are not only beginning their careers as independent artists, they are recording the end of the present.
CORRECTION: Crislin Meshberg was incorrectly noted as male.
