Many of the works in MICA’s recent thesis exhibitions take up questions that plague us in Baltimore, across the nation, and around the world.
In The N Word? by Jeffery Kent (Founder of Sub-Basement Artist Studios), a floating gun made of glitter squirts fluid into the face of a cartoon-like black male, whose whitened lips open in a blood-red gasp. Though the perpetrator is absent, everyone is implicated in the act.
In his Obscene, the featured word is spelled backwards (made out of clippings from porn magazines) and is placed above the silhouette of a machine gun. The accompanying text explains young men are trained to drop fire on people but their commanders won’t allow them to write a curse word on their airplane because it is obscene.
Jeffrey’s Communapitalist juxtaposes two world economic systems. A massive skull, with a Soviet flag emblazoned on its forehead, floats over an American flag. Here, the material of choice is acrylic and shredded paper, the detritus of production in every system.
On the opposite gallery wall, Michel Modell’s watercolors take up the anti-war theme with less apparent confrontation but equal power. In a series of four fresh watercolor portraits, young people pose in t-shirts with protest messages, transporting me back 40 years to another war, time, and place.
The figure in Jihad Jake sports a turban, beard, shades, and a t-shirt emblazoned with an American flag. He stands in a field of what appears to be poppies and an allusion to the drug trade. With this, Michel takes me quickly to the present Middle Eastern conflict. Here again, the technical choices are powerful. She has used watercolor washes of sometimes acidic or electric colors on a stark white primed canvas, working on a far more ambitious scale than we usually associate with this delicate medium.
At the same exhibition, I was particularly drawn to a wall of work by Joshua Lefchick. These paintings are abstract, but somehow convey a sense of human presence. They could represent distressed stone, the landscape of another planet, or for me, a close-up view of skin aged by life’s trials. These slick surfaces are slit open, right through the canvas, and folded back to reveal layers of paint below—turquoise or bright pink. These layers appear rolled to create a soft edge around dark shapes in swirling patterns that evoke human or animal entrails. Sometimes the upper layer is pulled and buckled, an artifact of the energy used to make the work.
As often happens, I wonder: How did the artist make these—and why? The museum person in me is wishing for long explanatory labels. Fortunately, I spotted MICA Professor Timothy App, who answered all my questions and more. Joshua was interested in figuration, but in his studies moved toward this abstract work. He uses a technical taboo to achieve this effect, painting that first organ-like layer in oil and adding subsequent layers in latex.
As any of us who have restored an old house know, latex does not fully adhere to an oil base. Here, the everyday problem becomes an artist’s opportunity, allowing Joshua to penetrate, alter, and exploit the unique material qualities of these layers. Abstract as these works may be, they speak deeply of people, from outer shells to inner physicality.
MICA’s last thesis exhibition closed May 2, but the best browsing and art-buying opportunities are yet to come:
- Today through Monday, MICA’s 2010 Commencement Exhibition will showcase works by nearly 400 emerging artists from the undergraduate class of 2010.
- And don’t miss the festivities tomorrow when MICA hosts its first annual benefit art sale. There you can buy affordable art works from students in the:
- Mount Royal School of Art,
- Hoffberger School of Painting,
- Rinehart School of Sculpture,
- M.F.A. program in Graphic Design,
- M.F.A. program in Photographic & Electronic Media,
- And the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate program in Fine Arts.
Filed in: MICA.
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 