One might expect a collection of images featuring the personification of death to be morose, dark, depressing, and grotesque, but in the new Figge Art Museum exhibit Dancing Towards Death, many of the works are instead humorous or thoughtful. The show is more about the uses of death-related imagery (and Death as a character) than death itself, with the skeletal manifestation conjuring a variety of moods and themes.
The show (which runs through January 9) was mostly drawn from a private collection and was supplemented with work from the Figge's collection. The art-history connoisseur will appreciate the inclusion of big names such as Albrecht D?rer, Rembrandt, and Käthe Kollwitz, but the exhibit also features unknown craftspeople, such as the artisans who created Books of Hours. And the accessibility of both the theme and the imagery will provide a meaningful experience for the casual art viewer.
Describing
For Such a Time as This:
Remembering Vietnam, artist
Adrienne Noelle Werge said: "I wanted to build an environment in
which people can come and meditate ... a space that is really built
in such a way as to respect all the sacrifices that are made and all
the lives that were touched by the Vietnam war and any war."
A small woman with clenched fists full of feathers plucked from her own legs is watched by smiling, colorful faces reminiscent of the simplistic advertising from the faux utopia of the 1950s. This is a microcosm of a room full of sculptures and paintings that present themselves with a straightforward charm that makes you smile, and then you realize there are darker themes that temper the smile with unease.
After
digging through piles of water bottles, cardboard boxes, plastic
forks, and take-out cartons lying near the tent, Samantha Dickey last
week began to build a model for a sculpture. "Right now we are
trying to come up with some ideas to make our main sculpture for the
site that we have," said the soon-to-be-sophomore from North Scott
High School. "My idea was to make a water fountain out of the
tires."
Pressed clumps of richly textured paper pulp shaped into crusty grates, inquisitive fish, and smooth vertebrae are given chromatic life with hints of vibrant blue-greens, rusty reds, and creamy whites. These colors and textures are given room to breathe with large expanses of grays and earth tones.
