Entering a dark room with flickering lighting overhead, the viewer is immediately confronted by a taxidermied mountain lion encased in resin. The rest of the space is filled with various sculptural pieces (by four separate artists) which are awkwardly placed and make it difficult to move around the gallery space. The piece that captures the most attention is a large aquarium brimming with water and aqua-scaped with a segmented welded metal cube in its center. Upon closer inspection, the metal cube contains 7 or 8 electric eels. This tank is rigged up to the central lighting of the gallery, and the power of the eels accounts for all the electricity that cause the flickering of the track lighting above. While the tank is an interesting commentary on power systems and maybe even our current environmental state for that matter, the remainder of the gallery space is filled with uninteresting assemblage sculpture.
Due to the inconsistent eel power, the gallery was too dark to enjoy most of the work, and besides the wonderment of seeing live electric eels, there seemed to be little if any dialogue between the pieces. While the showing had it’s moments the non cohesiveness of the sculptures created a lack luster experience.
I think that your review is very straightforward, but there are somethings I would change:
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning, before jumping into the description of a specific artwork, you could mention what the show is about/ what the curator was aiming to do, even if you feel like the point didn’t come across.
I agree that the eel piece overpowers the rest of the artworks in so many ways, but maybe you could describe the materials more briefly (it kind of just is a tank with eels) and mention the name of the artist and the piece.
Overall, I think your review points out the obvious “flaws” of the show: the space is dark, hard to navigate and the pieces look disconnected. But it seems like the curator was aware of those things and tried hard to make an unconventional, dimly lit, nothing-on-the-walls, show that becomes all about that and none about the artworks. Your final sentence says the experience was lack luster, which I think is really funny considering that there were flickering lights and living eels in the room, among other things.
Overall, your review let's the audience know the setup and general feel of the exhibit, describing the types of pieces in the room. However, I think it would be useful to include the names of the four artist that have their works in the gallery. Also, I have to agree that the unusual, and possibly dysfunctional, setup of the room was probably intentional of the artists, the whole show not "traditional" when it comes to what we are used to seeing in a gallery space. Finally I think your final paragraph is strong, in that it is very straightforward in voicing both your opinion of the exhibit as well as adding more description to how the gallery felt.
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