OCMA's conspirar

Alexandra Grant’s piece of artwork titled conspirar (after Michael Joyce’s “conspire,” (2004), 2005) is a mixed media on paper, but the majority of the work is composed of acrylic paints. It is 126 x 80 inches large, and is a part of the Collection of OCMA (Orange County Museum of Arts), Gift of Honor Fraser and Stavros Merjos. It is quite obvious that this work of art is primarily focused on the Hispanic culture due to the Spanish written words and phrases all over the piece. The Spanish language is Alexandra’s native language. She collaborated with Michael Joyce’s piece “conspire” and used the words he wrote and translated them in her first-born language, Spanish.



The piece is beautifully flourished with a variety of tones of colors; saturated in hues of purples. She focused on the color purple in this piece because it is perceived as both feminine and masculine. To her it represents the color of daily life; it is both a pop color and a regal color. These prominent colors attract the viewer’s attention immediately. It is lively and vibrant and might cause confusing to people whose first-born language is something other than Spanish. The foreign words on the painting are written backwards and circled in a text bubble. Alexandra’s goal was that she wanted to teach the viewers the difference between reading a simple text and fully perceiving it. This piece is complex through its thought provoking way of making the viewers understand the meaning behind and within the context of the words and not just the words itself.

There are also three ladders within the piece. The ladder is symbolic because it resembles the levels of writing. Alexandra Grant artwork is portraying a didactic ladder: representing the intentions she wanted to teach her viewers about the concept behind the meaning of the backwards Spanish words. The ladder on the bottom left of the painting is the most prominent one and leads the viewer’s eyes to the cluster of unidentified words. This depicts the concept of education and moving up in the ladder of education: the higher you go up the ladder the more educated you may be. Once we have reached the top of the ladder, those born with English-speaking language, will automatically not be able to fully comprehend the words. Even those born of Spanish-speaking language will not be able to automatically decipher the meaning of the words because of the way they are written: backwards. Alexandra is rendering our minds to think with more intricacy with concepts and meaning behind what we seem to believe as simple to understand. We can read words, hear words, write words, say words… but what do they really mean?

Alexandra Grant is successful in her stimulating piece of work. Conspirar is an artwork that elicits a continuing discourse among all of its viewers.

Guggenheim Gallery: LIFE TRANSMISSIONS

LIFE TRANSMISSIONS is an exhibit in the Guggenheim Gallery located at Chapman University in Orange, California. The show is open from October 6 through November 2, 2014. This show is constructed of a variety of pieces from different artists composed from a wide range of materials. The overall feel of the show was slightly overwhelming because of large piece of artwork in the center of the room. Although, the rest of the works were oranigzed neatly and spaced out enough. As stated in the press release, “what came first the chicken or the egg?” is an overall theme of the show. It is an interesting exhibition that brings forth the thought process of how we connect our interpretation of the beauty of art with the rest of the world.

Art is a way of expressing our emotions from life, memories, and moments, and how we transmit these emotions through all forms of art is unique. This show transmits ideas of art and its connection to the world in many different forms through painting, drawing, and video installations. As humans we are able to channel the world through our many senses. In the same sense, through these different forms of art we are able to interpret the unknown and the unseen. For instance one cannot see sound, and cannot see the emotions of anger or love. LIFE TRANSMISSIONS is both successful and unsuccessful with implementing these aspects throughout all of the artworks.

In Jed Ochmanek’s two oil paintings on aluminum express this theme of “LIFE TRANSMISSIONS”. These abstract paintings, Polarity and Highlands, are effective in conveying movement and fluidity in colors, but not as successful in communicating life. Though the meaning is not exactly clear within these two oil paintings, one can infer that these painting are expressions of an emotion or emotions from life. Due to the brush strokes and color scheme one can visually see the emotion of confusion and solitude. Both paintings resemble the same color tones, of cooler less saturated hues that creates this kind of mellow feel. The confusion may come across due to the opposite brush strokes for the two paintings. Why is one painting’s strokes horizontal and the other vertical? It could be because of the different emotions felt while painting these abstract works.

The other oil paintings are composed of three pieces that convey similar arrangements of sound waves. In life we are able to hear things because of the sound waves that bounce off of objects; however, we are unable to visually see these waves. These three pieces imitates the movements of these waves and the colors presented is a visual of this unseen movement.

Karl Haendel formulated an intriguing piece composed of 6 rectangle shaped frames with cut outs of different newspaper headings in each frame. The back is matte black and this creates a strong contrast with the light newspaper color that is on top. This piece in particular brings out a plethora of emotions. Like a delicate picture, these cut headings of highly important societal issues are enclosed in a protected glass frame. This is symbolic of the different outcomes and emotions one would have based from these conflicting issues. This piece is not successful in visually representing these emotions, but is successful in creating them because it involves so many touchy societal and political issues that affect different cultures and organizations in many ways. These 6 pieces takes these sensitive world issues and transmits them into a neverending conversation between us all.

Nightfall, 1971, created by Bas Jan Ader is a video installation that is 3.26 minutes long. The second installation in the show is called Painting the Town; by Megan Daalder is a digital video-loop that is 5.42 minutes long. These two video installations are not as prominent as the rest of the works in the show and quite frankly I almost missed seeing them in general. The placements of the video installations were awkward and this made it hard to focus my attention on them because of how small they were. Painting the Town was in the corner behind the entrance of the exhibit and it goes unnoticed until you exit the show. This piece was much different from the other ones. It had an invisible man exploring the streets of areas that would be presumed to be homes for homeless people. This is another example of exploring the unknown and any person can invision themselves in this person’s position in the video. The unknown individual riding along a homeless man’s cart is outlined and filled in with moving rainbow colors. This represents the uniqueness of every human being and helps include every gender, race, and culture into this conversation of exploring life’s mystery.

The large charcoal piece in the center of the exhibit could have affected this as well. Joshua Callaghan created a work called Focus, 2012 20 x 26 inches large, made with charcoal on linen. This piece consumed the majority of the space in the show. It was a larger than life, realistic, 2 dimensional drawing of a car. This piece is creative in its way of portraying life. When one is in a car you are driving horizontally, not vertically. Art is a creative measure in which we can alter into imaginative things. This piece specifically alters our reality of what a car is supposed to do. It is supposed to drive us to our destination ahead of us, but this drawing is directing our attention above us. This is iconic of the heavenly world and the unknown. We live in our reality and know our surroundings, but this drawing makes us wonder of the undiscovered and the things we do not see everyday. This piece is a good representation of the transmittion of the unexplored in our own lives. Art is an exploration of our own ideas and this piece is understood differently within each individual.

LIFE TRANSMISSIONS indicates all the experiences we have in life and how we all react to them personally. Each person goes through individual life experiences and not a single person will have the same experience nor feel the exact emotions, and this is what makes this exhibit so intriguing. The complexity and unidentifiable observations of all the artworks brings out an application of involvement with the audience as well. Without the title this exhibit would not work together. The title is what ties the pieces together and makes them uniform with the theme. LIFE TRANSMISSIONS draws the audience’s attention to the connection of art and its surrounding world.