Friday, September 11, 2009

Residual Reality

Residual Reality opened with a montage of artwork and a flourish of people. All of them were different in their own sense, both the people and the artwork. I had never been to an art show opening, nor to many art shows for that matter. At first I was uncomfortable with it all, I felt as though the people around me would know that I was a farce, that as I looked at the art, I really had no idea what I was looking for. Every piece I looked at was different, not so much from the previous piece, but in the sense that it was different from the reality of the world I live in. The tree was still a tree but it did not look like the one outside the building. But then I remembered the name of the show, Residual Reality. It all started to come together for me. Everything I was looking at still held on to a piece of reality, but each of us looking at it that night probably found a different piece of it. Now, I still don’t have any idea what some of the artworks represented. Maybe their only purpose was to “get us” to take a new look at the world around us. But I felt a strange connection to a few pieces, almost like the artist had been looking at the world through my eyes, like the piece by Joseph Mougel, “In Character”. Some times when I walk through a large group of people I feel like you can’t see “who” an individual person truly is because of all the others around. Much like “In Character”, when you looked at the piece as a whole you could not really see each person for who they were, but if you leaned in and took a closer look you could hear and see each person and their unique traits. I felt reminded to take the time to lean in and listen.

My eyes searched the room for the artists themselves, but when you have no preconceived idea of what an artist looks like, it can be hard to find them. It’s not like artists walk around with the little French berets on their heads that scream, “Hey, I’m an artist”. Thankfully the curator, who happens to be my professor, introduced me to a few of the artists who were there. The artists were not as I expected them to be. For the most part, Patrick NAGATANI was more interested in talking about how he and my fiancĂ© had both lived in the same part of California than talking about what had inspired him to create his masterpieces. Patrick said I might as well ask him his philosophy on life when I started to ask about his art. That’s when it hit me, and after the Round Table discussion, the thought was solidified in my head. Artists are people who have lives, and they would rather for you to know them instead of just the representation of their thoughts. Although their art expresses a part of who they are, I believe that I understood it truly, and only, because I took the time to get to know them. In the end, the show for me was more about the artist than the art.

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