Author: Eric Jensen, Managing Editor
From now until Christmas break, Weingart Hall is the place to be. It may not be the hippest hangout on campus, what with the abundance of chalkboards and overhead projectors killing the buzz, but pay a visit to the galleries on the first floor and you’ll find yourself engulfed in the radiant, raging creative genius that is this year’s Senior Art Comprehensives.
Forget the hardwood floors and white walls—the raw artistic energy in the gallery delivers an experience more akin to a Saturday Market, a treasure trove of unique and genuinely interesting pieces. Charles Malone’s pencil-sketches hang inside the double doors, offering a fresh perspective on old school nursery rhymes and fairytales like Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Wonderland.
“I reinterpreted each fairytale with more mature themes like drugs, sex, war and death,” Malone explains. “From the very beginning I wanted to comment on the human condition because I wanted my audience to feel as if they could relate to my work.” His sketches are intricate and hectic, teeming with delightfully irreverent revamped characters from childhood favorites.
Each step further into the gallery introduces a new theme and methodology. Christine Spector presents four of her Los Angeles-inspired linocut pieces. Linocut is a type of printmaking using gouged linoleum and ink to make images. Spector says that her depictions of the LA freeway system, a taco truck stand, the Los Angeles River and a street vendor “are aspects of the city that are ever present in our day-to-day lives, but that are rarely given a second thought.”
Some featured artists address deep issues in their work. One such piece is Jennifer Reid’s “Untitled,” an oil painting on two separate canvases that is modeled after two flanking portraits of Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella of Spain, originally by Renaissance portrait artists Reubens and Brueghel. “My pieces are sort of a modern critique of the classical motif of portraiture and associated issues of class [such as] material wealth, [and] patronage,” Reid explained. “In relation to my parents specifically (who are the sitters), the pieces deal very personally with their relationship and divorce.”
Another profound and striking piece, and the largest in the show, is located in the next gallery over. Stretched across the entire back wall, Dhyandra Lawson’s “The Gaze” depicts five nude African Americans in charcoal on canvas. Lawson, who spent a semester abroad in Rome, seeks to deconstruct the “classical ideal” of Roman figuration. “Binaries, dichotomies and constructs are all inherently fragile,” she says in her artist statement. “My project aims to destabilize them by removing the oppressor from his position as the ‘ideal’.” Lawson spent the entire semester creating what she calls “the culmination of my time at Oxy,” and the time and hard work definitely paid off.
Stop by Mullin Gallery to witness larger art installations by seniors Leah Fishbein, Thomas Carroll and Allie Peck. Make sure to get a taste of Oxy students’ artistic talent before it’s too late—the show lasts until the end of the semester.
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