Exhibit appraises value of technology in art

Rhys Bambrick '11, Joseph Redwood-Martinez '11, Charlie Warren '10 and Russell Webner '11 are four men with four separate visions, yet their works are aligned by common experiences within a shared epoch. Computer technology, the new leviathan, was clearly articulated as the subject of many of the pieces on display in This the Range and Recent, which was on display from Feb. 25 through March 4 in the Palmer Gallery.

The show's name comes from an all-text art piece by Redwood-Martinez. It's hard to say what's different between an all-text art piece and poetry or literature, but in this case the designation changes the way observers look at his words. Redwood-Martinez uses a very specific type of language: the language of the art show press release. The project was conceived when Redwood-Martinez subscribed to an online feed in September that sent him press releases about random art shows several times a day. The exhibitions advertised were taking place all over the world, in places where he would never set foot. Rather than writing them off as pointless, Redwood-Martinez set about searching for meaning in the blurbs—a task approximate in difficulty to searching for meaning in the 'burbs.

"Upon receiving a notice in my e-mail, I would pick out important phrases and words, rearranging them and deleting what I couldn't use," said Redwood-Martinez. "Certain words emerged as things that could stand in as a representation of the project they were describing."

Using words dredged from the uncharted expanses of the Internet, Redwood-Martinez took the limitlessness of information and narrowed its scope, creating a commentary on the usefulness of the infinite in general.

Bambrick displayed three series of prints for the exhibit, showcasing a medium which is more physically demanding than most. He estimates that he spends 35 to 40 hours making several editions of one print, a process that adds depth and meaning to his work.

"You start off with an ideal image in your head, but as you put time and energy into it, the piece morphs," Bambrick explained. The linocut reduction method Bambrick employs uses only one sheet of linoleum. "As you progress with the work, you're actually destroying the piece of linoleum and, with it, your ability to make any more editions of the piece," he said.
Wanting to create an image that was in some way particular to the medium of printmaking, Bambrick chose to print a self-portrait of his mid-section, prominently featuring his own hands. He used reddish tones to convey the perennially flushed color of his skin, but the color also makes the hands look rough and weathered, the way they do after spending a day in the printmaking studio. Six of the seven editions were displayed side by side in the Palmer Gallery, showing the variations in tone and technique that happen during each printing.

Two paintings by Webner that were on display use oils to portray digital media and computers in their valiant attempt to simulate war. Webner's oil painting of the Battle of Normandy, based on a scene from Medal of Honor, is unsettling even for those familiar with war or first-person shooter video games. The painting is constructed like a screen shot from the game, with the viewer looking down the barrel of a gun that extends forward into the picture plane. The scene is gristly, but the colors are strangely bright and the symbols along the bottom of the painting are scores, reminding the viewer that this is, after all, a game. "These games are incredibly casual about war," said Webner. "The fact that I can invade Normandy through a video game is cool, but also fucked up."

Charlie Warren's best piece in the exhibit, called "Jeremiah Johnson's Comforter Coat," consists of a simple metal mannequin dressed in a coat that Warren made from a comforter with a convex mirror pinned to the lapel. "This one is sort of about losing your mind," Warren said. The arms of the coat are twisted about like a straight jacket, and the puffy light blue fabric has a sort of institutional feeling. Behind the sculpture is a sheet of butcher paper covered in scrawled phrases such as, "the measurements of captivity" and "*very small bears." They are Warren's scribblings to himself, not initially constructed for an audience, and are quite interesting to peruse. Many were written in reference to Sydney Pollack's 1972 film, Jeremiah Johnson, which was playing on a TV during the opening.

The coat stand contains an element of self-portrait in that it was constructed to Warren's specifications. He admires tailors. "I'm interested in how human proportions come out in measurements," he said. While the mannequin doesn't have a head, the convex mirror reflects the viewer's gaze back towards you, making it feel like the comforter coat is examining you, rather than the other way around.

While I found similar themes in these four students' work, and while I thought that each person's work was remarkably good, it all felt a bit disjointed. The reason why this show took place is something of a mystery. Redwood-Martinez, whom I admire greatly for his ability to organize other people's energy, asked the others to participate with him, and everything fell into place. But it reminds me of an old boys network, especially since the majority of the students in the Art Department at Vassar is made up of women, as one attendee observed.

That said, I have a hard time believing Redwood-Martinez does anything randomly, and I feel he may have been leaving me clues I wasn't wily enough to pick up. Maybe the answer lies in the depths of those press release poems. Or perhaps it's like what Charlie jotted down on the piece of paper taped to his wall: "Clearly, if it was that easy, I would just tell you."