See below for visual arts events beginning Thursday, February 4. There’s still time to order advance tickets for the ART PAPERS Silent Auction this Saturday! Check out Art Relish for a preview article by Gray Chapman.
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The first show of 2010 at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery opened Thursday night. Entitled Limitless, this group show honors the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei’s invention of the telescope, inviting artists to “‘reveal hidden worlds’ by taking wide-ranging approaches to art making while using an expansive scope to view the universe.” Considering the extraordinary example set by the show’s inventor-of-honor and its promising list of participating artists, I went into the exhibition with high hopes. But I also was mindful that such a broad statement of intent left considerable room for half-baked ideas, trite sentiments, and over-the-top diluting of the purity of spirit I was hoping for. However, my fears were unnecessary. With only a few exceptions, Limitless was earnest, well-balanced, and endlessly interesting.
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Gyun Hur’s Repose is the kind of show you wish you could love, want to love, but somehow the chemistry never happens. You walk into the gallery and there it is, beaming up at you from the floor: a big, brightly colored carpet of thousands of tiny pieces of shredded cemetery flowers, arranged in long, alternating bands of color. There’s an immediate sense of tension between the work’s visual power, and seeming permanence, and the realization that a quick blast of air could send the whole thing tumbling and whirling away. In addition to this “carpet,” there is a clear acrylic shelf that runs along the back and side walls of the gallery which is covered with the same striped pattern of finely-chopped, almost minced, fabric flowers.
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