Take 10,000 Q-tips, some broken light bulbs, a zillion glittery plastic tabs, junked acrylic and insulation foam, some moss and twigs.
Make art.
That appears to be the assignment taken to heart by winners of the Jerome Foundation's 2011-12 fellowships. And it worked. The five delivered a fresh, engaging show with a lot of unexpected thematic connections, on view through Nov. 6 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
When Jerome officials hand $10,000 to each artist, there's no requirement that they work together or investigate a common line of thought. On the contrary, the grants are a no-strings-attached opportunity for young talent to go its own way and see what happens. That these five appear to have had a conversation is pure chance, but it makes for a more coherent and provocative exhibit than usual.
Chalk it up to the zeitgeist
That we live in a cluttered, trash-strewn world is not news. Nor is the notion that our understanding is constantly shaped by artifice -- by our collective memories of paintings and photos, advertising imagery, scenes from television, film and myriad other media. The challenge is to do something novel with these givens.
Gregory Euclide rose to the occasion by using bits of junk in elaborate 3-D dioramas of visionary places. Fashioned from particleboard, Mylar, found-foam, plastic binding straps and other detritus, his constructions unfold from the walls like scenes from pop-up books. He wraps little watercolor vignettes of urban skylines and modernist homes into rocky landscapes sculpted from folded paper festooned with twig-trees, pine-cone cliffs and tiny waterfalls made from ribbons of thick paint. There's a seductive charm to his romantic trompe l'oeil concoctions that fancifully re-imagine Eden yet again on tiny, free-form stage sets.
Richard Barlow at first seems to be auditioning as a disco decorator. He has covered a rust-colored wall with thousands of shimmering black-and-gold plastic tabs that flutter like autumn leaves and would sparkle plenty under nightclub lights. Inspired by a 19th-century photo of trees, the pendulous forms in his evanescent mural also bring to mind Monet's famous paintings of his wisteria-covered Japanese bridge.
