If you’re lucky, smart and had some spare time on your hands this past month, you’ve had the chance to see some of the work that Wooster’s senior art students have done for their Independent Studies. The last of them is on exhibit this week at Ebert’s Sussel Art Gallery, and is well worth the visit.
As before, there are two exhibitions running simultaneously in the same space. One features a series of photographs that circle the entire room, and the other is mainly statuesque creations that invite the viewer to walk around them and view the figures from all angles.
The photographs belong to Ben Katz ’10. The collection is called “Passage Through Night” and as the title implies, explores the world after darkness falls. The pictures are all large and are mounted at or slightly above eye level, and there is plenty to engage the viewer’s attention in each of them. In the introduction to the exhibition, Katz states the series is intending to portray “personal experiences of an exploration into the dark world.”
Most of the shots appear to be taken by an individual either standing or sitting somewhere just outside the scene, giving a personal air to the photographs; the viewer can imagine themselves looking through the lens up at a massive skyscraper, or over a gate into the darkness of the woods. “The night has becomeÖ accepted as a place and time to live,” says Katz’s artistic statement.
Not only do we as visitors to the night experience that place (whether it be a backyard pool steaming at night or a small-town convenience store), but we meet the inhabitants ó a hula doll, people laughing in a brightly-lit bar, a boy with his face smeared with blood and eyes locked with yours. Although Katz’s work speaks of the beauty of night, it is clear that he is aware of its dangers.
Jongseok Oh ’10 chooses a slightly different world to portray in his exhibition, and although it too contains risks and pitfalls, its beauty shines through as well. “Identity Structure” is made up of four separate pieces, although all of them are somehow fragmented or broken up. The light colors of Oh’s work contrast interestingly with the dark photographs around it, and the set-up of the exhibits, though not purposeful, functions to make the viewer standing in the center of the statues feel surrounded.
“Identity can be fragmented into different identities, which can include gender, culture, nationality and so on,” according to Oh’s statement. And so it proves to be. Four sculptures are closely grouped together near the entrance to Ebert ó “Transgender,” made up of two head and shoulder busts, one male and one female, “Self-portrait nesting dolls,” made up of a series of figures that decrease in size and increase in cracking and “My Shelf,” a head-and-shoulders cutout piece filled with little shelves containing ID cards, American and South Korean flags and tiny molded figurines.
Identity is not solid here; it is changeable, and, as Oh puts it, “determined by social influences.” And some of the social influences are both familiar and surprising ó my favorite piece, “Human Jenga,” is a good example. Located beyond the staircase in the back of the gallery, it is literally a game of jenga in the shape of a full-grown human being. And as the game is clearly in progress, with blocks removed, it’s hard to keep from touching it (don’t). Here, Oh shows how we continue to modify our identities.
And that’s what people do at college. We build and shape and reconstruct our identities to exclude what we don’t want and include what we do. Oh and Katz’s exhibits are a solid end to a series of wonderful senior independent studies. Now it’s up to them, and to all of us who are graduating next week, to take those identities which they have built so painstakingly out into the world.