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29.01.2008
Multimedia art show at UTD showcases critics' pick of little-known Texas artists
The UTD art and humanities department hosted the opening of critics' pix2 Jan. 18 in the Visual Arts building.
UTD art professor John Pomara organized pix2, the second show of its
kind on campus. The show was comprised of local Texas artists selected
by a panel of critics from publications such as "The Dallas Morning
News," "Art Lies," "Art in America," "DallasArtRevue," "Glasstire" and
"The Fort Worth Star Telegram
According to Pomara, the only criteria for the selection of artists
featured were their ties to Texas, and having received as of yet little
to no national recognition. He said this was an effort to expose the
wide variety of talent residing in Texas. pix2 will be open to the
public until Feb. 22.
Multiple critics can only mean one thing; variety in artist, art and
theme. There in lies the greatest strength of pix2, a palpable air of
creativity abounds, something for everyone can be found. From Cameron
Schoepp's bronze cast totem "Institutional Memory" to Kevin Joseph
Brown's gas filled plasma vessels pix2 represents a wide variety of
media, interpretation, and skill. "A plurality of ideas and craft show
us a microcosm of our area," Pomara said. The resulting show is a
refreshing look at both the breadth of ideas finding form, and the
apparent skill with which the artists perform.
This variety is often overlooked and neglected by the exclusive nature
of an "art club" mentality in which individual schools of thought and
product find precedence amongst the many number of valid artists
operating at any given time. To illustrate; I ask whether Jackson
Pollock's splatter paintings are more or less valid without art critic
Clement Greenberg treatises on action, space and energy? Artists have
been functioning and surviving outside the traditionally validating
setting of galleries and critic based criterion, perhaps not regularly
to preeminence and national acclaim, but to live while working just the
same.
Pix2 functions more as a contemporary museum hosting a broad range of
works that encapsulate a knowledge of historical art styles and themes
while infusing each with contemporary means, and the ever present
artist's dream.
Peter Calvin's photo journalistic style "record a robust segment of
Dallas society…His portraits of shop keepers and residents depict
people who as owners of their own businesses are participants in a
fundamental aspect of the American dream. But what emerges as his
overall theme is the fragile status of that dream as we move into the
twenty-first century," writes Dee Mitchell, the juror who selected
Calvin for pix2.
In stark contrast to Calvin's photography are the conceptual/textual
work of Terri Thorton who "navigates the territory between physical
presence and the ethereal nature of thought." as Noah Simbalist writes
about the character of Thorton's contribution to pix2.
Both Josephin Durkin and Amy Revier's works capture attention with
movement, whimsy and engaging sculptural elements activating the space
in which they reside, and draw the viewer in to participate in the
cycling narratives.
I believe Matthew Bourbon illustrates the strength of pix2 and the
subjective variety in art when writing about his personal reasons for
choosing the lyrical impressionistic narratives of Alan Reid. "I
invited Alan… not because his work reflects something of my own
mentality or because his work might fit as a fashion or supposed trend
in contemporary art… He makes daring decisions that I find quirky,
smart and at times poignant. There is comedy and unabashed impudence to
his paintings that seems rare and from the seat of my own biases and
desires-valuable."
Pix2 is a microcosm of "Art" in the whole. Subjective themes and
personal goals are too narrow a view by which to be pigeonholed. Art
has and always been about much more then a single show, a sequence of
steps or given movement. Art is about history and our place in time and
space, a fabric, a system, an exchange. Pix2 contains a glimpse of a
living, breathing organism that isn't always pretentious, stagnant, or
lost, but is in truth valid, multifaceted and here to visit with until
Feb. 22. I'm anxiously awaiting pix3.
Noah Peters
Source: media.www.utdmercury.com
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