By: Alayna Anderson
This review is on the “Valdosta National” group exhibition at the Dedo Maranville Gallery online. This exhibition is only shown online due to Covid 19. Eight hundred and seventy-five pieces of art were submitted by adults across the country to be shown in this exhibition; however, only seventy pieces were selected. (Valdosta State, 2021) This decision was made by judge Claire Dempster and stated in Dempeter’s bio located on the gallery’s website.
The website is pretty easy to navigate. The first thing you come across on the page is the judge’s bio and statement. Following this are three videos made by artists displaying their work. Scrolling a little further down the page the viewer will come across many photos of other works of art. The photographs are kind of clustered together in a grid like format. These images are too close together for my liking and behind several of the images is a distracting red background. Hovering the mouse over the image allows access to information on the art. This information includes the artist’s name, title of the art, media, size, price, and ways to contact the artist. Clicking on the image redirects the viewer to a new page where they can view the art in a larger format. This is nice; however, the images don’t have a high enough resolution to get a closer look at the art by zooming in. I find that to be quite disappointing. Regardless, due to the pandemic, it is great that technology has provided a way to view art from the safety of our homes.
While the experience of viewing art online isn’t ideal, I still found a few works of art to be intriguing. One being Hillel OLeary’s, ___ is where the ___ is. The piece is made out of plaster and the form seems to represent a small model of a house covered by a large white “sheet”. The “sheet” is smooth as it stretches around the edges of the roof but starts to ripple and fold on the sides. ___ is where the ___ is makes me think about quarantine and feeling isolated from the rest of the world. Looking at this work of art feels almost suffocating but in a strange, peaceful kind of way.
Another work that much time was spent pondering was Dong Kyu Kim’s Consuming Memories #12. This work is a video of three different compositions. Each one of the three compositions show a screen recording of Kim scrolling through his photos and selecting images to enlarge. Photo galleries on someone’s phone can be so personal and can tell so much about a person. As Kim scrolls though his photos, several questions come to mind. Where is he? Why did he take a picture of that? Why are there so many pictures with the brand Supreme in them? Is that just his favorite brand? In the age of social media, I’ve noticed that we’ve become so fascinated on what goes on in other people’s lives.
The overall exhibition was decent. Unfortunately, the exhibition only had one image displayed of the three-dimensional work. I would have liked to see the work from different angles. There were a couple images where I questioned the quality. Of course, art is best viewed in person to be able to really see the details within the work. Given the circumstances with covid-19 and quarantine, it’s nice to be able to view art exhibits online.