Showing posts with label U turn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U turn. Show all posts

Monday, April 4, 2011

Pared: Matthew Deleget + Ellen Nagel at U·turn Art Space

























Alright, so Matthew Deleget out of New York and Ellen Nagel out of Cincinnati opened at UTurn on Saturday night. There were definite elements that unified these artist, color pallet, the element of found objects, overall the show worked. Deleget worked with severely discounted art books as art objects in the white cube, and his headlining piece (pictured above) color fields referencing a beatles song made of found bags. All in all a clever piece and mix of cultures. It still had a strong aesthetic quality and interesting concept which seemed to fall a little short in my opinion for Ellen Nagel's work. She focuses on subtlety and restraint with her pairing of objects, and is interested in how these objects relate in the space of the viewer as sort of collage-like avatars. This as a viewer was either too cryptic or too trite from image to image. I personally enjoyed more of her subtle pieces involving just a manipulated bicycle tire as apposed to those involving real clothing. There is something about a chocolate brown leotard with scarf through the leg holes, painted coat rack down the middle and brass "nipples" that I had a bit of trouble relating too. Though I found some of her fabric and flaccidity and hardness choices humorous. All in all it was a show worth seeing whether or not it has long standing interest.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

People Who Make Us Smile. U turn.












I don't know who made it out to Uturn gallery space on saturday with the rain and bockfest keeping everyone busy, but there was a show about humor that had some interesting work. The show was called People Who Make Us Smile. It was full of installation work and funny images. DVDs of funny shows and movies, A 75 dollar Bart Simpson "don't have a cow man" cup full of yellow liquid, collages, one featuring my favorite "Pizza the Hut", a running jersey that has "you have fat ankles" in a convincing logo, to list a few. All of the work was pretty light and a fun show to spend some time in. I was proud of the people who submitted work because while it did contain some one liner art, some of the pieces were a bit more than that, which was refreshing for a cincinnanti show about humor. It was a nice mix of objects and images that brought their wintertime viewers a bit out of their seasonal affective disorder.
Show highlight was a photograph in a studio/garage space of a typical midwest looking mom sticking her head through the "O" in a giant sign that said "Mom". She is grinning and standing on the remnants of where they cut out the "O". Her expression and dress combined with the surroundings made everyone laugh when they looked at this piece in a gallery setting.
Show sadness, my friends Chris Reeves and Loraine Wible had a couple video pieces that people kept turning the volume down on. I didn't even really get to hear the piece, bummer.