RISD grads share their visions
By GREG COOK | May 28, 2008
TRASH CULTURE: Milton Stevenson’s The Beginning of My Ascent to the Center of the
Universe Vol. 2.
|
RISD’s annual “Graduate Thesis Exhibition” could be just the place to glimpse the future of art, as predicted by the school that U.S. News & World Report recently said has the best master of fine arts program in the country.
More than 120 graduating students present work in a sprawling show at the Rhode Island Convention Center that ranges from painting and ceramics to furniture design and landscape architecture. There’s so much going on that it’s hard to notice quiet pieces like Xiaoli Dai’s cute spare ash wood stools with a surprise: the stools are rockers. It’s hard to tell by sight if they’re good to sit on, but they’re some of the best-looking work here, resembling elegant Chinese calligraphy made 3D.
No trends pop out. This year’s painting and photography are bland, but the show comes through with its usual selection of stylish graphic design and alluringly curious fashion, like Nanhee Kim’s exploded sweater and knit dresses covered with stuff that looks like knit scales or dinosaur fins. But mostly this year’s event is populated by been-there-done-that ideas and styles.
An exception is Mark Skwarek’s Children of Arcadia, which invites you to explore a digital apocalypse. Lightning flashes and rain pours down on rolling green hills dotted with tall trees and ruined classical-type temples. Great plumes of smoke billow into the sky. Blonde women in blue dresses wander about with names hovering above their heads. Occasionally a bit of type pops up on the screen, something about “NYSE” (the New York Stock Exchange). As video game worlds go, it’s good, but nothing much seems to develop. The most interesting thing I found was a group of six virtual ladies rest-lessly walking in a tight circle like furies or fates.
A computer intro explains that this “is a real time virtual ecosystem which undergoes the stress test of the apocalypse to expose the moral fibers of its inhabitants and the flaws in their idealized utopia.” The virtual landscape somehow corresponds to the landscape of New York’s Wall Street. Real people can also supposedly wander New York’s actual financial district wearing special goggles that allow them to virtu-ally wander the apocalyptic arcadia. The severity of the virtual apocalypse is determined by US economic data and Google headline searches for America “good” or “evil.” That’s a lot to take on, and it doesn’t quite add up here, but Skwarek’s onto something.
Lucas Ray’s The River In My Mind Project is a computer summary and photos documenting a project in which he interviewed people about their memories of Providence’s rivers and then apparently stenciled some of their thoughts onto downtown sidewalks. It’s a promising subject; too bad the quotes are mundane: “I remember when the river fed the mills”; “I remember when the river was completely hidden.”
Related:
Here comes trouble, The Gadfly, Back to the barricades, More 
- Here comes trouble
There’s nothing like a brouhaha to make art feel relevant. And the Boston art scene has just been blessed by two.
- The Gadfly
Nestled in the verdant mountain valley of Glover, Vermont, way up in the northern part of the state, is a farm of rolling meadows, pine forests, and gray barns, all under vast skies.
- Back to the barricades
In the fall of 2005, when the artist and curator Mark Tribe began teaching at Brown University, he was struck by how little protest there was on campus at a time of war.
- Peter the gadfly
Bread and Puppet Theater is the landmark political troupe that has been pricking US presidents and policies with a unique brand of street theater since JFK was in office.
- Radical chic
“The gallery system relies on supply and demand, and I created a demand for my work by doing street art.”
- Year in pictures
Imagery 2008
- Life in Hell
Wiharso, who lives in North Kingstown, fills 5 Traverse with a harrowing dance of demons in black silhouettes and ruddy flesh (well, charcoal, acrylic, enamel, and spray paint).
- Peabody rising
Could the Peabody Essex Museum be the Boston area’s most exciting art museum right now?
- Boston exposures
Photographer Nicholas Nixon of Brookline first burst onto the scene in the show "New Topographics."
- Architecture of Heaven and Earth
Looking at the wavy roofs of Félix Candela's most iconic structures, like the restaurant Los Manatiales (1958) in Mexico City, I think of pinwheels or the fluttering dress of a spinning dancer.
- In focus
Photography has been New England’s greatest contribution to art of the past century.
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Celebrity News, More
, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Celebrity News, Entertainment, Hillary Clinton, Movie Stars, Tom Cruise, Rachael Ray, Milton Stevenson, Less
