The “Mixed Bag” is a variety of contemporary art created by five different artist. The exhibition was set up in the Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery at Valdosta State University. The exhibition deal with a variety of social issues that are sometimes too hard to discuss. So each artist created artworks dealing with social and political topics that they feel strong about. The topics vary from sexuality, queerness, faith, race and death.
papier-mâché, panel, canvas, embroidery, tin foil, gold leaf, thread, acrylic
When I first walked into the gallery, I felt a sense of emptiness compared to previous shows. The walls were not over crowded with works. In fact it was maybe two or three works of art on each wall, the back wall in the gallery even had one piece hanging. Just based on the scene set up, I concluded in my mind that this show may be a very simple show, but yet the artworks convey strong messages that we often deal with throughout life.
Ideally, I made connections that most of the work had that post modernism feel. Looking at the pieces I felt as though they were made from your everyday household objects. One piece in particular that sat in the back of the gallery on the floor caught my intention. It was a block constructed with what I believed to be bath tiles. It had what I assumed were bath plugs, until I further looked and noticed the chains attached to the stoppers were actually necklaces. The piece was entitled “What I See”. It had a very monochromatic color scheme. To me the piece implied a story. What you see is what you see, nothing more, nothing less if that makes sense.
Majority of the pieces had a different variety of media. The pieces by artist Xia Zhang interested me the most. He used different mediums in his work such as porcelain, cotton, gold thread, wood, wire and glaze. When first looking at his pieces before really engaging them, I thought that I was looking at a series of different paintings. What I realized was that they were scenes from movies. There was a total of eight different pieces, each of them dealing with social subjects dealt with throughout the world. One of the pieces said “To Americans, all Chinese look alike for goodness’ sake”. I immediately interpreted that this particular piece of work focused on racism. Emphasizing how Americans view other that are of a different race. Zhang’s pieces varied from the subject of racism, sexuality, and feminism.
Another piece in particular that caught my attention was the setup of dolls, by Max Adrian entitled “The Buddy Community”. My initial reaction was why he dressed these dolls up in these different furs, and loud colors. The dolls were all connected at the neck with rope metal chains. I wondered what the purpose was. My initial take was that the artist was showing how much of an influence friends can have on one another. Signifying that we often let our friends influence us on a lot of decisions. Almost like having a chain wrapped around one another pulling them and making them do whatever we want, whether the decision is right or wrong.
Majority of the works in the show used soft pastel colors. I kept noticing a repetition of this pink pastel like color in a lot of the works. Because most of the works were by different artist it made me wonder why this specific color seemed to be used in a lot of their works. Was it because of the message they were trying to convey, or did they all just like the color pink? Whatever the reason it tied together well with the simplicity of the show. It was very different, but I was very interested in the works, if more than anything it left me wondering “why” to a lot of the works.
Tatyana Jackson is a current senior at Valdosta State University. She is a BFA major with a specific concentration in graphic design. After she graduates, she wants to return to Atlanta, Ga in hopes of finding a graphic design job with a major company.