Exhibit #2: A Discussion: Pink Elephants on Parade

This exhibition was created by Nick van Woert. Immediately entering the space it was clear the interest in different materials, or as stated in the gallery description, "the semantics of material." The first piece was Untitled, and composed of a plastic statue, urethane plastic and a steel base. The plastic had been melted and dripped in a very interesting way preserving the liquid-like shape of the material now stuck in a solid form. All of the materials seemed to be in conversation with each other. All of which are highly industrial components of mass production such as plastics and steel but in this gallery setting van Woert has essentially repurposed them giving them an artistic quality. The placement of this piece, Untitled, was very strategic in demonstrating this repurposing exploration of materials presented to the viewer immediately upon entering the gallery.

The objects constructed from these curious materials are in essence mimicry of their real counterparts such as the untitled piece containing materials within a plexiglas form resembling a chair. They are "materially speaking, decidedly not what they purport to be" and thus engage in an ersatz material language simply by existing. They are recognizable objects but deceptive in every other way aside from form. In the construction of such pieces the artist attempts to draw attention to the shift in our collective culture from a language that linked prototypical material with estimable values to the synthetic and ignoble. Van Woert's discussion hints at familiar themes in many cultural dialogues such as Heidegger who, similar to van Woert's nostalgia, romanticizes earlier artistic efforts and, in a sense, a lost art form of poetic creation of art. The artist cites his own influences among which are Albert Bierstadt and numerous other artists from the Hudson River School and the Romantic Era. This influence is evident upon closer scrutiny of a piece such as the chair, The synthetic materials layered inside are a grotesquely vivid and unnatural combination of colors and form flowing in patterns mimicking landscape painting. However, the result is wholly unnatural and shows a bastardization of the traditions of landscape painting that is no longer intrinsically and romantically linked between the artist and materials but instead is made synthetic and detached.

The conversation between the materials utilized by van Woert and the overall forms they create somewhat eludes me however. Assuming the role of the synthetic materials shows a shift from the prototypical material and attached values to something less it would be no great leap to assume the form also represents a reductionist cultural observation. In the case of the 'chair' the form may then suggest the plainess and meaningless of overall form utilizing these synthetics, no matter the intended connection to such beauty as in traditional landscape paintings from the Romantic Era. Conversely, the form of a chair may represent the classical forms throughout painting and sculpture used by van Woert as a vessel to convey the gross void that is the synthetic and a necessary detachment from it.