On January 10th, the art gallery was full at the reception of “Arsenal”, an exhibition featuring graduate student artwork. A few dozen grad students, faculty, and a pinch of undergrads filled the tight venue. After waffling down some kebabs, I grabbed a glass of Pinot and looked past the lobby to the artwork displayed. Although a sign clearly said “No Food or Drink in the Gallery,” I could see people, students with their big black glasses, running across the installation, their wine glasses carefully balanced between their fingers.
Going in, I thought the space was filled with random things: large wooden sticks out lining a sphere, prints of circles on the wall, a creepy warzone in the back, and the fun part, rows of huge square pedestals, that when stepped on, made a variety of sounds that was then magnified to over the whole space. Wine glass held tight in one hand, I braved it. The pedestals were not only loud, but also wobbled and tilted in all directions. Children ran back and forth on it, looking much like they were running on the moon.
It was then that all the pieces seemed harmonized. The giant wooden sculpture became an exploding star, the circles of blue, red, white, and green were suddenly planets, and after climbing over the tundra, one enters the mysterious warzone with strong political affiliations.
I sat on a bench in the corner and watched the slide show of planets, the same as those printed on the wall, now projected on another wall. I realized these circles were edited images of various kinds of texture, as if they zoomed in with a camera on a scattering of ash, or pigment, and the result was not only beautiful, but also made me think. Taking a relatively (that is, in relation to a planet) minuscule thing and tricking my eye to think that it’s Jupiter, or Neptune, really made me reconsider scale. The incomprehensible largeness of the universe is now pitted against the equally mind-boggling minuteness of those tiny particles that are everything and everywhere.
The works exhibited don’t necessarily blend well, and some I simply don’t understand without a lot of context, but I didn’t mind. I felt like I had traveled to the moon and back.
Come by soon, the exhibition is open until February 10th!
