LOS ANGELES — The Fisher Museum of Art at the University of Southern California has been swallowed by the sea.
The Indonesian fiber artist Mulyana has taken over the museum with colorful, hand-knitted and crocheted aquatic life. Mulyana: Modular Utopia features two room-sized installations, three-dimensional fiber wall sculptures, colorful costumes, and soft, inviting pillows.
Mulyana crafts a tactile, mystical world in which fish, whales, and coral reefs coexist with sea monsters. A multi-hued green figure made from yarn, “Adikara” (2020), emerges from a bright bed of seaweed and coral. Mulyana, pulling from Indonesian tradition, often creates masks and costumes to explore other dimensions of his personality, usually a heroic, nonhuman creature. A ruffled, yellow costume, “Si Koneng” (2022), sprouts from patches of dull gray coral, contrasting the subdued sea life with its sunny energy.
The duality of life and death is a recurring theme in Mulyana’s deceptively cheerful art. Much of the plush, gray coral that spreads across the walls in “Luna#6” and “Candramawa” (both 2022) represents reefs in slow states of decay. Warming waters associated with climate change and manmade chemical waste dumped into oceans are responsible for the once-vibrant ecosystems’ loss of color. In a video performance, the Si Koneng monster wanders through the dreary, grayscale ruins of Indonesia, searching for signs of life.
The devastation becomes more accentuated in the large-scale installation “Satu” (2018). Beautiful, pure white clusters of tubular and rosette corals surround a 3D-printed whale skeleton. Above, a large cluster of jellyfish study their fallen friend. The monochromatic room harrowingly foreshadows what will happen to our oceans without any intervention.
Mulyana, however, remains optimistic, and embraces life in another installation. “Ocean Wonderland” (2022) contrasts “Satu” with lush forms of corals: purple buttons, pink shoots, green petal-like folds. Thousands of yellow fish swim overhead. A large whale pillow, velvety and inviting, lets visitors rest and take in the peaceful ocean scene.
This room also contains the various hand-sewn pieces that make up “Modular Monster” (2020). People can pick up different pieces of anatomy, like bean-shaped eyes, wavy tentacles, or branch-like horns, and hold them up to a mirror to reflect a strange new creature. Mulyana’s intent is that multiple people will hold up a body part while standing behind one another, waving the piece to make a cohesive creature.
Ironically, Modular Utopia is on view during a period of historic rain and snowfall in California. The frequent precipitation that chases one inside of the Fisher Museum should keep the effects of climate change at the forefront of any visitor’s mind. But hold tightly onto the optimistic visions. By situating the collaborative “Modular Monster” in the same room as “Ocean Wonderland,” the artist emphasizes the importance of working together to create a harmonious world. The bleached oceans are not the only possibility looming; and perhaps the monsters we create are not bad spirits, but protectors of the ocean, desperately needed conservators of life.
Mulyana: Modular Utopia continues at the USC Fisher Museum of Art (823 West Exposition Boulevard, University Park, Los Angeles) through April 13. The exhibition was curated by John Silvis.
The two-part exhibition features the work of 41 graduating artists across disciplines, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and integrated practices.
Serge Attukwei Clottey explores Ghanaian culture and identity through discarded jerrycans and other found materials.
Nothing in the artist’s personal biography could predict that she’d one day become a car builder and bikini model.
Curated by Jennifer Samet and Andrea Belag, this group exhibition in NYC explores the feminine through aesthetics, as opposed to identity or gender.
After two decades of renovations, the museum that calls itself a “well-kept secret” reopens with a mission to be more visible.
Many thought the picture of Pope Francis in a puffer jacket, created using Midjourney, was the real deal.
Taking place at 80WSE Gallery in New York’s Greenwich Village, Part I is on view from late March through April while Part II opens in May.
Historians hypothesize that the Moche paintings could represent artists’ attempts to experiment with portraying movement or narrative.
President Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 has sparked widespread demonstrations across the country.
Through small-scale works, this exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art in New York examines Cornell’s prominent role in the lives and careers of Johnson and Kusama.
There must be a lesson in Vasilis Katsoupis’s film Inside about the vacuousness of the art market or the claustrophobia of exhibition spaces — I just don’t care.
The Rijksmuseum’s traveling show strives to remind us that we are all, in some way, a part of this chapter of human history, whose legacy continues today.
"artist" - Google News
March 28, 2023 at 04:22AM
https://ift.tt/63zUCHS
An Artist's Hopeful Vision of the Ocean - Hyperallergic
"artist" - Google News
https://ift.tt/e3qoMvV
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "An Artist's Hopeful Vision of the Ocean - Hyperallergic"
Post a Comment