“Making It Alone”
Creative Research Laboratory, through July 29
How much information is too much? How can we tell when information is being withheld? Entering the Creative Research Laboratory, artist Aron Johnston has two works welcoming you to the gallery. On the wall hangs a painting with three distinct sections. The top diagrams knot-tying instructions, the midsection highlights the name of the piece, Strain, and the bottom third depicts a man’s feet awkwardly pointed with pants around the ankles. The status of your digestive system is too much information. Hanging in front of the entrance is Hello, a multimedia work. The colorful text painted on the front of the silvery-gray crate greets you, as do the salutatory hand gestures on the video playing on one side of the construction. On the backside, there are four dogs. One looks on at the ménage à trois of introductory sniffings. The fourth side remains blank. Is there something missing, or was that intentional?
Also included in the exhibit are photographs of a foggy morning in suburbia, a hand-built deer feeder intermittently shooting corn kernels, a cabaret performance, cartoony sheep paintings, childlike illustrations, and a spray-painted stereogram. In the other room are paintings of awkward architecture inserted into landscapes, ceramic seeds, and a video of a toilet being cleaned. Eleven artists total are represented. The works are not hung salon-style, but there are a good-sized number of works. Too much information? Each artist calls out for individual attention with little interaction or substantial relationships with the other works. Is there something I’m missing?
Art history students Andy Campbell, Erika Cole, Rachel Mohl, and Ashley Schmiedekamp continued the CRL tradition of organizing two-part summer exhibitions featuring MFA candidates from UT’s College of Fine Arts. According to their curatorial statement, “Making It Alone” highlights artists working in the studio environment. What they fail to inform the public about is the premise of these summer shows. Limited to the works of participating graduate art students, the participating graduate and doctoral art history candidates must compose two coherent curatorial efforts. Working with an open invitation and little powers of exclusion, the organizers molded this first group into an erratic and underwhelming show. Leadership must be taken if this program is to grow into something more than just show and tell. On August 12, we’ll find out if this was just a lame-duck exhibition or an important contrasting investigation in understanding group projects. That’s when the companion exhibition, “Making It Together,” will open, featuring artists working in collaborations.
This article appears in July 21 • 2006.