Each year, alumni and Fifth Year Certificate students of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) compete for several Traveling Scholarships that allow them to study in a foreign country. The program culminates in an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
This year, three alumni (Bill Durgin, Will Pappenheimer and Laurel Sparks) and three Fifth Year Certificate students (Mathew Clay Freeman, Leslie Hall and Elizabeth H. Wallace) were selected for the show at the Museum. These artists result in a vibrant mix of media and statements. While the lack of a central theme can make visitors feel a little lost, the works invite and merit exploration. The exhibit is an exciting glimpse at new artists who engage contemporary themes like technology and the Internet (two of the artists incorporate videos from YouTube.com), human conflict and pop culture.
Durgin's "My Figurations" series consists of photographs of nude figures posing against plain, indoor backgrounds, contorted so that various body parts appear truncated. In one print, a woman's legs stand straight and her torso bends toward the wall, which intersects her body at her shoulders, leaving the viewer to wonder what happened to her head. One figure is barely recognizable as a man's back, with the head and limbs not visible.
Durgin describes his series as "attempts to turn the body inside out ... creating a moving sculpture of skin, muscle, fat and bone." Besides being thought-provoking, Durgin's C-prints are beautiful. Using a large-format camera, he creates pristine images in soft tones with the body, white walls and white or tile floors providing the only color.
Freeman displays four works in the show. Though they are very different, they all deal with the idea of human conflict through the juxtaposition of interior and exterior and of wild and domesticated. This theme is most clear in his triptych "Study for Spring is a Perhaps Hand that Doesn't Break Anything." Freeman has mounted pastel toys and other objects on flowered wallpaper that rests inside gilded frames. The pleasing image is perverted, though, as the viewer examines the piece further. The toys are mostly plastic mice, spiders, snakes and scorpions. These are interspersed among classic images of the home: picture frames, picket fences and tiny crosses. The effect is disturbing.
Another of Freeman's works, a video entitled "Derangement in the Community," tells of "calamitous food poisoning" caused by mold-infested buckwheat in a small American town during the '30s. The video is short, only seven minutes long, and definitely worth watching the whole way through.
Hall, as some may know, is somewhat of an Internet celebrity already. Her gem sweaters have been selling fast, and her videos "How We Go Out" and "Willow Don't Cry" are hits on YouTube. These videos are both included in the Travelling Scholars exhibition, along with three paintings and two vending machines. Her band, Leslie and the LYs, will perform tonight upstairs at the Middle East.
Pappenheimer's works also involve the Internet and the general public, although in a different way than the others. He selected stills from YouTube videos and made them into pointillist-like canvases using hand-dyed pom-poms. Another work, "Globlots," charts events like earthquakes and tides from around the globe, measured by different colored "poms." In the same room, Pappenheimer exhibits footage he shot in Australia of various bowerbirds, a species that collects objects of a certain color to build and decorate their nests. Offerings of pom-poms were made to the birds, and some can be seen in the video.
Sparks and Wallace are the only two artists in the show not to contribute installations. Both use mixed media to make abstract images. Sparks' series, "Flaming Creatures," features canvases painted in bright colors and large organic forms. She uses materials such as marble dust, enamel and even Venetian glass so that her paintings are textured. These expensive materials and her sumptuous imagery are used to connote glamour and decay, commenting on a culture of excess. Sparks cites "Venetian chandeliers and human bones" among her inspirations.
Wallace's images, in contrast, are very refined. She uses primarily graphite, watercolor, acrylic, oil pencil and ink to create images with much detail, sparse but deliberate color, and fascinating forms. They may be the most visually interesting pieces in the show. She describes her works as "maps of the possibility" to mend relations between humans. This quality is not apparent in her pieces but does provide another way to look at her already intriguing work.
This show is not only entertaining, but provides a good introduction for those unfamiliar with contemporary art. The SMFA Traveling Scholars exhibit runs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston until March 2. Admission is free with a Tufts ID.
