Manufacturing Identity - Opening Night
Artspace 105
Heritage
Lionel Rombach Gallery
August 24 –
September 9, 2009
__________________________
Heritage is an installation that represents the industrial legacy of America through its relationship to the land. Focusing particularly on the automotive industry and the spaces associated with large-scale production, this installation comments on the gravity of our current crisis by predicting the future decline of American industrial culture. Heritage is comprised of over 30 paintings placed on the floor surrounding a sculptural spire entitled American Monument. Directly referencing the Washington Monument, this piece is created from various cheap construction materials and coated in high gloss automotive enamel. American Monument effectively rises from the painted industrial landscape as an icon of impermanence revealing its flawed structure and false integrity.
Lower Landscape
Heritage by Chris McGinnis
9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday, Aug. 24 through Sept. 9
Lionel Rombach Gallery
UA campus, southeast corner of Park Avenue and Speedway Boulevard
626-4215;
Starting Monday, you may be surprised at what you find—or don't find—on the walls of the UA Lionel Rombach Gallery. Instead of displaying his art in the traditional way, Chris McGinnis will be installing more than 30 paintings of landscape on the floor of the gallery.
"It's definitely not traditional," says McGinnis, a MFA student at the UA. His exhibition, Heritage, examines the roots of our American landscape and ideologies through our blue-collar industrial history, so working against the high-class traditions in art makes sense.
He explains that putting his art on the floor rather than the walls is like a slap in the face for high art; we're literally walking all over it. But, he continues, installing his landscapes on the floor allows for another opportunity: It allows "landscape to act as landscape."
"Growing up in Pittsburgh was a huge inspiration," he says.
McGinnis hopes to capture that city's increasingly relevant blue-collar history, particularly in terms of its relationship with the automotive industry. He says that because members of his family work in the industry, the exhibit hits especially close to home for him.
McGinnis explains that to include this idea in the show, the only sculpture in the exhibit will be made out of various cheap construction materials and coated in high-gloss automotive enamel; the "spire-like" sculpture will be the most illuminated and central piece of the show. It directly references the Washington Monument, adding another dimension of American identity. As visitors walk around the structure, they become part of the exhibit, alluding to the water in the reflecting pool at the monument.
Admission is free. —S.J.
Press Reviews:
UA News Interview video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k70b59S01RY
Tucson Weekly News
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Arts/Content?oid=oid:114704
UA News
Art in 360 Degrees
Facing Front
By La Monica Everett-Haynes, University Communications
August 14, 2008
"Facing Front" is an exhibit that incorporates video, art, dance and other
mediums in a project that will be on display through Sept. 5.
Christopher McGinnis, a UA fine arts student, worked with dance professor Douglas R. Nielsen on a collaborative project that views art and dance from all perspectives - not just head on.
When Christopher McGinnis began sitting in on Douglas R.
Nielsen’s dance class to sketch students in motion, it set off an artistic
connection. During that time he became more “interested in trying to capture motion in drawings and the way out bodies interact with the space we’re in,” said McGinnis, a second-year University of Arizona master’s degree student in fine
arts.Soon he began working with Nielsen, a dance professor and art collector, in a collaborative project that has culminated with an exhibit and planned performances at the Student Union Memorial Center’s Union Gallery.
The project and exhibit, “Facing Front: Chris McGinnis and the School of Dance,” opens Friday and is very much a fusion between the fluidity in McGinnis’ art work, his interest in collaborative projects with various
mediums and the multifaceted movement of dance in Nielsen’s world. The exhibit incorporates drawings and paintings with video, documented choreography and live dancing.“I’m more interested in the actual collaboration and showing people the
congruencies between the different forms of artistic expression,” said McGinnis, who is studying painting.
“When you can get hands together and different mediums working in different ways of expression – for me, that’s what the show is really about,” he added.
During the two performances, School of Dance students will perform
improvisational movements in the gallery, involving the audience members and each other in their dance.
Video projections from a project Nielsen completed earlier will play in the background and one dancer will walk around with a video camera attached to a television strapped to his back that plays the video feed on a delay. Holly Brown, the Student Union gallery’s curator, said “Facing Front” is somewhat unconventional, that it is “a less formalized approach” to both the dance form and also to exhibitions.
She and Nielsen both emphasized that the work challenges the traditional relationship between the dancer and the viewer.
Nielsen described that it is not common to have interaction between the
dancers and the audience. He said “Facing Front” is challenging that by bringing all angles of performance and art into focus which involves redefining both.
“Audiences are usually told to sit in a chair, shut up and turn the cells
phones off,” Nielsen said. “We’re asking them not to sit, but to move
throughout the space and experience it in 360 degrees.”
It will be quite a different experience, Brown said.
“We haven’t done this before”.
“It’s inviting people to view in all these different ways. And people are
encouraged to bring their own cameras," she said, adding that people are
welcome to document their experience. "It’s definitely very modern.”
Modern dance is Nielsen’s area of expertise.
He has recently been experimenting with new forms and functions within the art of dance, so when he met McGinnis and found that the UA graduate student was very much about capturing energy in his work, Nielsen said he became interested in collaborating with him.
“I was impressed. He was drawing without looking at the paper,” Nielsen
said. “He was capturing energy, which is my bag. I’m interested in the
blurry line, not the straight line.”
Exhibition Images
