Before dinner, I checked out Vancouver Art Gallery’s Friday Night event, Fuse. Fuse is hosted one Friday a month and the museum extends it's hours till 11 pm. Fuse features live dj’s, special performances, art lectures, activities, and free cocktails at the Gallery Café. All this for a discounted price of $10 instead of the regular admission cost of $15.
I was stoked to see a packed museum of hip and fun looking people checking out interesting art on a Friday night. The next Fuse event is November 25th. If any of you Seattlelites don’t have any Thanksgiving plans, this would be a great weekend to head up to Van City for a mini-vacation.
I loved the Classifed Materials Exhibit!! How could I not – I collect, classify, and archive almost everything in my life and my life! Everyday I archive my life in a minimum of 3 of 4 formats. Why do you think I love Japanese magazines so much… they love to collect, classify, and archive everything. Magazines after magazines have 2 page spreads showcasing every possible variation of one item… from yakisoba to restaurant chairs, from sneakers to Cartier watches, from pencils to pencil sharpeners… I LOVE it. When I was in the 2nd grade I started my own filing system for all my books. In the upper right hand corner of the book’s 1st page, I would write in the book’s reference number, along with year I received the book, and my name.
Classified Materials Exhibit “examines some of the ways in which artists employ, transform or challenge the processes of ordering and classifying through which conceptions of the world, and our individual positions in it, are deeply embedded.”
I loved Ellen Gallagher’s pieces that address racial identity and it’s social consequences. She creates mixed-media pieces using advertisements found in mid-century black culture magazines that she deconstructs by defacing the models and original text then rebuilds by layering different materials to portions of the models and creates new messages by combining some of the original text with text from other advertisements. Did anyone check out Ellen Gallagher’s solo show at the Henry back in February 2004?
I also loved Steven Shearer’s work. He addresses youth and alienation by creating collages of death-metal rockers inspired by found images taken from 1970’s teen magazines, discarded photo albums and downloaded images from the web. The collages were hilarious and sometimes sad. Lots and lots of photos of blue collar rockers, ass shots of nude rockers, and long, ‘rocker’ hair. One of his pieces is a ceiling covered in rock band posters complete with a bed. In order to fully appreciate the posters, you have to tilt your head way back. I couldn’t help but notice patrons viewing this piece had to strike a classic rocker pose… only things missing are a guitar and belting out Black Sabbath lyrics.
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