Now Hanging
Decider roams Milwaukee's galleries looking for stimulation
Untying A Shoe With An Erection, sans erection
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The images created by Daniel Rozin’s new interactive media piece, Snow Mirror (Milwaukee Art Museum, through Jan. 11) are reminiscent of mid ’90s experimental films created on Fisher Price’s beloved PixelVision camera. Museumgoers enter a dark room to see their bitmapped, glowing likeness projected upon a sheet of silk. As they move the image blurs, as if trying to catch up, before reformulating into a slightly tighter yet still anti-aliased portrait. The other works included in the wonderfully accessible and kid-friendly exhibition, Act/React, pick up viewers with video cameras or infrared motion sensors and pull them into the art.
At the Milwaukee Institute Of Art & Design, artist Adam Frelin creates fantastic fictional narratives that feel like short documentary films in Media Projects 2008. In The Fence Thief, an arborist passes a rainbow-colored, picket fence and decides it should serve a greater purpose. The protagonist throws his find into the back of his van and drives to a forest, where he nails the posts to the side of a giant oak, creating a tree house-style ladder that leads 60 feet up into the canopy. In Frelin’s collaborative piece with artist Shun-Ichi Oqawa, B-flat, eight female violinists are rowed down a river outside of Kyoto while playing only one note. This beautifully shot piece juxtaposes imagery of the rocky sides of the gorge with the smooth landscape of the musicians’ faces and instruments. Also showcased in this show curated by MIAD professor Jason Yi are artists Bodil Furu and Bethany Springer. Media Projects 2008 runs through Dec. 13.
Stop. Look. Listen. (Haggerty Museum Of Art, though Feb. 22) is the brainchild of curator Andrea Inselmann, in partnership with Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum Of Art. Inselmann brings together 13 artists from all over the world, including Denmark native Mads Lynnerup, whose Untying A Shoe With An Erection frames a white string connected to the end of the artist’s loosely tied shoelace hanging from above. The string slowly rises, quivering ever so slightly, until the knot is popped free and the string slowly lowers and comes to rest. Another highlight is Finnish artist Salla Tykkä’s Cave Trilogy, which consists of three fictitious narrative pieces that investigate a female’s transition from puberty to adulthood while playing with the ambiguity of male/female roles and how women are perceived in traditional cinema.
