“Corporeal” is open until June 10
By Josh Hughes
Where does the tangible body start and end? Why are we fixated on the fleshiness of flesh, and why does the physical tend to come second to the conceptual, the immaterial? We often find ourselves looking at works of art immediately grasping for the symbolic, or the uncoverable puzzle laid out in front of us. Instead of using formal aspects as a starting point, we drift over the bodily functions and start off with an acceptance of what they do. But what happens when we begin to question those preconceptions and start our dissection, as viewers, with the physical itself? This year’s culminating BFA Gallery, “Corporeal,” in the Western Gallery, might help us answer some of these questions as we continually figure out how to inhabit our own bodies on a day to day basis.
The year-long intensive BFA program at Western always ends with a gallery, meaning the last show of the school year contains exclusively student artwork. This year’s BFA class consists of nine students: Jessica Bloom, Margaret Carr, Renee Cheesman, Kaitlin Howland, Vian Nguyen, Eleanor Ortland, Caroline Paulson, Kameron Peck and Dylan Vogel, all of whose work is exhibited in the show.
ABOVE: An oil painting by artist Margaret Carr. Photo by Janna Bodnar // AS Review.
“The artists in ‘Corporeal’ use an expanded concept of the body to address issues ranging from social structures and gender performativity, to affect and the post-human condition” reads the entrance to the gallery, inviting viewers to engage with the artwork under a specific lens. To be sure, there are a number of visceral bodies featured in the exhibit: paintings of writhing human figures, leather “inanimate guardians,” cartoons bursting to life with hyper-realized muscles. But look beyond the obvious and you’ll also see Dylan Vogel’s desolate, haunting photographs of stark buildings, and Jessica Bloom’s abstract pigment prints, artifacts that require more unpacking to successfully address any concept in relation to the body. The exhibit summary helps us with this too, as it also states: “the body provides a potent metaphor to deal with the multiple layers that constitute an exhibit of this kind. Through their individual lines of inquiry each artist’s practice occupies a distinct subject position while contributing to the ongoing dialogues which produce collective knowledge.”
ABOVE: “Meat Fetish” by Caroline Paulson. Photo by Janna Bodnar // AS Review.
A gallery functions in its own way as a body of parts, working in conjunction with each other to produce a cohesive endpoint, and so “Corporeal” does this in a self-aware manner. The art itself constitutes as the body, with each piece functioning in a unique, albeit connected way. Caroline Paulson’s blunt “Meat Fetish,” a mixed media sculpture involving a spilt shopping cart of wrapped meat, resides at the front of the gallery, but its effect on the viewer impacts later works in the gallery such as Vian Nguyen’s paper plane paintings with assorted bits of body parts strewn about its surface.
ABOVE: Painting of paper airplanes by Vian Nguyen. Photo by Janna Bodnar // AS Review.
Elsewhere in the gallery, Margaret Carr’s oil paintings display the intertwining of human bodies, body parts and the desire of connection amidst the too-oft actualization of miscommunication. Renee Cheesman’s mixed media works address the violence of American culture and its brutal effects on the body as a whole. Kaitlin Howland’s “Inanimate Guardians” is comprised of various puppet-like figures engaged in different interactions, and Kam Peck’s comic book pages are excerpts of exaggerated, textured bodies working with and against each other in animated stills.
All in all, “Corporeal” does an excellent job of showcasing the breadth of student work throughout the BFA program while portraying the conjoining factors that make their work exist in the same spectrum. Be sure to look out for these burgeoning artists in the next few years as they pave their respective paths in the art world beyond their careers at Western.
what a dank writeup.