Soft Machines, Mushroom Clouds, and Masks or: Five Bucks Well Spent
This evening, I went to the opening reception for three new exhibits at the Fleming Museum: Between Soft Machines and Hard Science: The Interstitial Art of W. David Powell, Michael Light: 100 Suns, and Actors and Exorcists: Masks of Sri Lanka.
Contemporary Celebrity Phrenology for the People, 2007 (detail)
Between Soft Machines and Hard Science: The Interstitial Art of W. David Powell is an installation of digital collages produced in 2007 alongside historic scientific instruments. He used appropriated medical, scientific, and industrial illustrations; typography; and his own drawings to explore his interest in the human mind and body, relationships, and obscure sciences, such as phrenology. The scientific instruments that accompanied the collages were equally as interesting: x-ray tube, phrenology head, electronic apparatuses, and other odd devises.
I wish I had more examples of his work to show you. I have a few hanging in my living room, but that doesn’t help you. The main reason I went tonight is because W. David Powell is my former graphic design professor. He helped me land my first “real” job — a job he once had and I was laid off from last year.
Michael Light: 100 Suns, the largest of the three exhibits, is a collection of photographs taken mostly by anonymous government photographers of atomic explosions that the United States did in the 1950s and 1960s. The photographs were eerily beautiful. It was easy to get lost in the clouds and intense lighting. Most of the photographs were just the explosions but a few were of soldiers with the explosions behind them. It was a bit disturbing because the expressions on their faces were blank and you know they were thinking, “What the fuck are we doing here?”
Looking at the instalation, I couldn’t help but think about Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. At the end of the installation, there was a list of places grouped by year of all the atomic detonations. I was surprised to find that the last one on the list was in 1992.
The last exhibit, Actors and Exorcists: Masks of Sri Lanka, I didn’t look at long because I was overstimulated from the other two, so I don’t have much to say. They were interesting and creepy. I’d like to go back and draw a few.
I didn’t mingle much because I’m still nursing the remnants of a cold: It’s difficult to speak when one is constantly coughing. Plus, whenever I see an art exhibit, good or bad, I always want to get back to my workspace and work.