The new show up in the C33 gallery on the Columbia College Chicago campus explores a wide variety of both the comforts and terrors of home. What makes home? Is it the people who dwell along with you, the projects that take up space from years of collecting dust, the memories of all times you had there, or even mental snapshots of what’s gone by and come up so far? Each artist thought something else when the concept of dwelling was put out there. It could be as dark and mysterious as Austin Swearengin’s piece entitled “Finding a Way In”. The sculpture isn’t recognizable as a house or shelter, but rather a sailboat shaped box with no entrance or exit. This leaves the viewer either interested with wonder or fed up with an artist or curator’s “concept”. With any exhibit there’s the possible problem of whether or not the viewer will get the art or the “big idea”. This may have been the largest problem the show faced.
“Memory Archive” was less abstract and was a full wall of snapshots that made the viewer feel like home. It's hard to not be cynical at this. Why are there s many images? Where there not few enough that were strong enough to stand on their own or even in sets, that the artist had to just put up the whole roll? At least this piece was receivable. I'm sure there wasn't a soul that walked by and though, “Am I not getting this?”
Although not all work can be as to the point as Anna Peter’s memory archive, some of the pieces left the viewer completely at a loss. For instance, in Carrie Schneider’s family videos, the subject is older and featured in her mother’s arms in one and having her hair washed by her father in the other. Are these family videos reshot with the child now of adult age? Is there something wrong with the girl that these tasks are being completed for her? Is there some sort of incest theme that’s supposed to be going on? I couldn't have been the only one to think this—so was the point of the piece lost because I'm asking myself so many damn questions? That's what I'm thinking.
Ginny Hou’s “Corrugated Roof” also left you wondering what exactly was roof like about the structure at all. You leave the mind completely up to the viewer with little subtext and you have a very weirded out audience. At the same time, many works of art are not meant to have some huge theme. Sometimes it's just enough for it to provide the viewer with an emotion, a certain “je n'este pas” can help art go a long way. “Roof” made me want to crawl underneath the accordion folded paper, into the fetal position and just listen to the call of birds. Come to think of it, that exactly what “Dwelling” can be.”
The heavy audio visual elements and abstract concepts of the show made it about 3 stars in my book. Opinion is everything and “Dwelling” is different for everyone in very different place. So do these could elements make the show fail? Not if you had enough pieces to rope the viewer in and still make ‘em reflect. So go on and reflect kids.
Stephanie Del Monte, Untitled, 2010
