Just to keep our records here nice and tidy (and to at last satisfy our anxious and anticipatory audience), I'd like to go through our official decisions, though unfortunately only at near-completion.
Linn Meyers
Untitled ("Mandala"), 2009
India ink on Mylar
60 x 76 inches
For most of the year, we were entertaining the idea to commission a permanent, site-specific piece from Linn, seeing how captivating her work in the Art Gallery was. Unfortunately, reality wasn't as keen and we were told that the student union would have to be repainted every ten years.
However, our trip to G Fine Art revived our enthusiasm for Linn. We were extremely fortunate to have Linn come down to the gallery to meet us! Personal contact with the artist seemed to make her work even more desirable. We discussed with her everything from her process and interpretation to the practicality of public display. After viewing a wide collection of her work, we found that the large "Mandala" piece was best for us.
While the intricacy and size of the work are fascinating alone, we felt that Linn's work was a refreshing observation on the recalcitrant nature of artistic intention. Though the embodiment of a vision is never pure, Linn looks to celebrate this phenomenon, creating beautiful drawings without whollistic vision. Her pen is guided in the moment, yielding very human "slips" in the process of a line. As the lines pile, these areas of "slippage" become elegant ripples, adding a dramatically moving feel to a simple collection of strokes.
One of the greatest parts of this particular work, we felt, was its incredible size. The piece could easily be enjoyed from a distance (which is useful in a large public space such as the union) and from upclose (where "slippage" can be dissected and the human element is most apparent). Also, including a drawing (and such a fine drawing at that) will expand the collection in terms of media (the current collection only includes photographs and a painting). We think that this work will especially please a multidisciplinary audience.
Barbara Probst
Exposure #43: Barmsee, Bavaria, 08.18.06, 4:02 p.m., 2006
Ultrachrome ink on cotton paper
2 parts: 44 x 66 inches each
(I'm realizing that your faith in my descriptions is going to have to make up for the quality and size of these images...)
Barbara Probst has found a beautiful way to bring attention to the limitations of photography. All of her pieces in the Exposure series show two or more perspectives of a place at the exact same moment. Triggering her cameras at the same instance with a remote, Probst allows us to easily piece together the scene, recognizing common gestures or backgrounds. But the viewer in the process of this puzzle may be challenged by the varying implications of a single object or person from different perspectives. At a time when images bombard us as presentations of the truth, we are suddenly grappling with the biases of the individual pictures.
There is also a strong element of viewership within many of her works, featuring the camera from which another of the pictures was taken. While we may identify the source of each of these perspectives, we realize a larger interconnection with the addition of our own viewpoint, and perhaps the viewpoint of the person viewing the work beside us. While Probst may originally seem to discredit a single viewpoint, this vast connection of perspectives adds that each is important to come closer to understanding the truth.
We were again impressed with size-- each photograph was large enough to command attention on its own while also allowing for a careful comparison with the other. Exposure #43, out of a series of over 60, seemed to include several of the concepts that some others only highlighted individually. We were especially pleased by its readability, feeling that the greater audience of various backgrounds could easily extract meaning particular to their own experiences and concentrations.
Dulce Pinzón
ERNABE MENDEZ from the State of Guerrero works as a professional window cleaner in New York. He sends 500 dollars a month.
Mounted color photograph
Dulce Pinzón
MARIA LUISA ROMERO from the State of Puebla works in a Laundromat in Brooklyn New York.
She Sends 150 dollars a week.
She Sends 150 dollars a week.
Mounted color photograph
We also had the pleasure of meeting Dulce in her home and studio! She had some great stories with some of her images and expressed considerable appreciation for all of her "models". Being in the heart of the neighborhood where so many of her images were set made these works even more real, humorous, and honorable.
Each of the images in the Superheroes series features an Mexican immigrant in New York City working their service jobs in a popular superhero costume. The title of each includes the person's name, their Mexican hometown, their job, and how much money they send home to Mexico each week. While stark juxtaposition between the workplace and the costume can be quite humorous, the message driven by the titles causes us to marvel at their underappreciated efforts and reflect on the immigrant condition in America.
The works featured a wide range of costumes, but we felt that the message was more intense with costumes which revealed the immigrants' faces. In this way, the worker's nationality was highlighted and added to the celebration of their cause. With popular imagery of these superheroes planting the expectation for young, white faces in these costumes, the juxtaposition is carried deeper and the definition for "hero" is broadened further.
Positioned near the heart of another immigrant city, Dulce's work will speak to those facing this issue everyday. The Unversity of Maryland is a campus of diverse backgrounds, and its immigrant feature will surely be appreciated by many. On the surface, Dulce's works may draw more people into the collection with its popular imagery and initial levity. Mostly we hope that Dulce's work will challenge the intolerant attitudes that many parts of society have held toward the immigrant working class.
Jefferson Pinder
Five videos from the Juke series
Digital video
We were surprised to hear that an art professor at the University of Marlyand had representation at G Fine Art, where our interest for Linn Meyers, Barbara Probst, Chan Chao, and Iona Brown had already brought us. Jefferson Pinder's collection of videos was extremely interesting, but we felt particularly drawn to the Juke series, with each African American lipsyncing to a stereotypically "white" song which highlights a larger human condition. The "singing" is passionate, with each actor seeming to weave the songs into their own experiences and reactions, though its common conception as a "white" song would make the act seem ridiculous.
Each video was freshly unique. offering a wide range of narrative possbilities and cultural or personal reflections. Pinder proposes to relate each person and each song to a larger concept of human experience, challenging the myths hanging over both. Like Dulce's work, Pinder also offers an entertaining juxtaposition of opposites in a clever design. The videos employ moving pictures to capture the audience, and our media-driven community will surely take interest.
Annu Matthew
Two prints from the series An Indian from India
Archival digital prints
12 x 19 inches
(Due to a very intimidating copyright declaration on her website, I've decided just to link you to Annu Matthew's website...)
While we may not be able to officially claim her works under the umbrella of the Purchasing Program, we are proud to say the student union has brought two pieces of Annu Matthew's series An Indian from India to the University of Maryland.
In this series, Matthew sets side-by-side images of a Native American and an Indian (using herself as the model each time). Playing with the ambigous identity of "Indian" in America, she looks at original historic photographs and creates an Indian parallel, underlining a colonial apathy towards the distinction. These Western images mold the natives and their icons into seemingly unnatural depictions, relating to the awkwardness of the "Indian" ambiguity.
We are again interested in the challenge against a clumsy societal definition of identity and truth. Matthew adds a deep cultural perspective in regards to marks of identity. While she may make a point to distinguish the differences, the photographs side-by-side admit to the similarities of the native experience-- Native Americans with Americans and Indians with the British. Yet, as a modern Indian American posed in a historical photograph, Matthew must distinguish her own experiences from those of her heritage, and the heritage for which she is often mistaken.
The smaller works will prove to be the more intimate pieces in our collection, if simply for their style and size. Again, understanding the diversity of backgrounds at this university, we feel that the Matthew pieces will relate very personally to many groups and provoke a deeper understanding of their heritages and their significance in contemporary America.
Edward Burtynsky
Silver Lake Operations #3, Lake Leffroy, Western Australia, 2007
Digital chromogenic print
27 x 34 inches
I include Burtynsky here only to explain why we're not done yet... It seems that the gallery representing Burtynsky in New York has closed before we could carry out the purchase. We're left wondering whether we could purchase one of his works from one of his other galleries, however the distance between us and the others could indicate quite a lofty shipping rate. We're also unsure as to whether we should go back to our short list again and consider the works of Jane Hammond, Cheol Yu Kim, or Chan Chao.
However, this was our choice. The eery, yet gorgeous, landscapes of Burtynsky had us hooked from the beginning. Featuring some areas that hardly seem earthly, he captures the sublime in such a way that causes his audience to be admiring and disgusted. His works show the consequences of human industry, and while they may seem beautiful, the viewer must question the value of this beauty and the impact it has on the beauty of environmental balance. Burtynsky, rather than interpreting the impact of consumerism on the earth, allows the images to speak silently. The ambivalence in their presentation makes the viewer decide their stance, only claiming to provide unmodified photographs.
The University of Maryland has a growing interest in the environment with a number of departments and student groups taking action. Bringing this image to the union could give them an icon for their cause as well as something of a passive campaign on its own. The quality of both his message and photography would be well supported on this campus.
But, for Burtynsky, we'll just have to wait and see...
All of our purchases will be displayed this fall in the Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland Stamp Student Union!
