Gallery Paper

 

 

    The exhibition that I have decided upon reviewing is The World Is A Picture Of The World, by Jeanne Liotta, currently being displayed at the Microscope Gallery 529 West 29th st on the second floor. The artwork displayed at the exhibition in particular, utilizes drawing, collages, photography, and projection. What seems to be the most interesting part about this exhibition is the fact that it essentially reuses photos taken by NASA from outer space that are normally sold at places such as gift shops, and repurposes them to showcase other perspectives of the universe from the imagination of others. The reviewer from the gallery's webpage also alludes to the fact that the overall theme of her exhibition revolves on how the light in the universe influences how we perceive things, but also that there are also some visuals that we are not able to comprehend due to limitation of our eye sight. This is further emphasized by the following quote, "Liotta recognizes that humanity’s visual understanding of the universe is based on its photographic reproductions of what exists beyond what the eye can see". The exhibition's webpage goes into further detail of the process behind each of her specific art pieces, which I will touch upon briefly in the section where I review 2 of her pieces.

    The first art piece from her collection that I am deconstructing is the image on the left, which one out eighty images from her “My Mind of Universes Erupting Continuously” collection. The pictures from this collection were all exposed to the sun's rays for a period ranging between a few weeks to a few months. This particular picture has a few elements that I would like to touch upon by further decomposing it. The genre of the photo is a bit hard to describe in my opinion. In a sense it is kind of like a landscape since it is trying to paint a picture of the environment. On a technicality, this may not be a landscape since there is no actual land being portrayed in this photo, it is just a portrait of celestial bodies observed from the Hubble space telescope. In another sense, this can also be viewed as conceptual since the photographer took the liberty of manipulating the picture through exposure to the sun's rays to add a green tint as well as adding additional planets using cutouts of tape and stickers. The various cutouts were laid out in a way to look as if they were also planets, which sort of gives off the impression that there are more planets hidden our solar system that perhaps we aren't able to see with our eyes. The picture itself seems draw an emphasis towards the two big and black circles. The reason is due to the high contrast between light levels as all the surrounding planets are extremely bright while the black ones are the complete opposite. The picture itself also sparks some curiosity since the blacked out planets seem like they are missing from the photo in a sense and wants me to do more research to see if more details on the planets actual appearance can be found.

    The second art piece from her collection that I am deconstructing is the image on the right, which is one of her photos from the "Proceed, Radiations" collection. The pictures from this collection were created from a base of black and white photo grams of planetary systems layered on with some colorful gels. The picture in particular that I'm observing utilizes the blue gel. The picture seems to give off an impression that the solar system is being viewed from the perspective of someone who isn't human. The background of the picture that doesn't involve the planets seem to somewhat form the shape of an eye. The solar system in the center also seems more so like a reflection of light that is beaming onto the iris of the metaphorical eye. I personally really like the photo because of how abstract it looks. It also doesn't use the traditional shape of planets to form the system. It incorporates the use use of rectangles, crescents instead of full circles, as well as different shades of black and blue. The center of attention/emphasis in the photo would be the celestial body in the center. The reason for that is that it is a dark gray surrounded by white and then encompassed again but with even darker colors. The other thing I like about this photo is how everything is not uniform. You have the shapes in the center arranged in way so that it looks off center. The shapes forming the eye-like structure is also not perfect enough to look like an eye, making it look like something else for another person. Lastly, the blue gel looks like it was just placed on ther, but only partially to get rid of the square like structure of the original photograph since the gel looks like it is hanging of the base of the photo.

    Overall, I enjoyed looking at some of the photos from this exhibit. They definitely sparked some curiosity in me and make me one to try view things from another perspective. If I ever get the chance to view an exhibit in person, I will greatly consider taking the opportunity.