MFA Show

I have to say, honestly there was not much that I saw in this show that really interested me. for one, I am getting tired of all the abstract art, and random installations that seem to me like someone took part of their messy room, put it in a gallery, and called it art. I didn't find many of the works aesthetically pleasing nor thought provoking. Though I'm not trying to be offensive, I don't mean to come off that way, I'm just being honest; it's just my opinion. Perhaps I am just missing something, am I not getting some deeper meaning? I don't know, things like that frustrate me. It was also kind of irritating that many of the works were not yet labeled..why open the gallery if it is not ready yet? I also have very little to say about the setup of the gallery. It means nothing to me, I cant see any functional relationship between the works displayed. But, I will stop my little rant there and now focus on the things that I did like.

I was mildly interested in Caetlynn Booth's paintings on the left wall of the main gallery, both were dark landscape paintings, each composition spanned two canvases to make one long horizontally rectangular scene. Personally, I love paintings that are more of an exaggerated rectangle, I don't know why. I can tell that the artist paid a great deal of attention to detail. Even though there is not very much variation in the values used in the paintings, and everything is very dark, you can still see every detail. Every line is still sharp, and every object recognizable.

In 'Night Park' I particularly liked the lamps and the small slivers of light they cast, peaking from behind the trees in the background. Although very small relative to the whole painting, I feel like the painting is a success largely due to the artists depiction of the light.

In the far back room [gallery f], farthest to the right from the main room, I encountered a couple paintings I really liked. The two extremely colorful paintings on the right wall of gallery f, unfortunately without labels, so I've no idea the title or artist of these paintings. These two paintings are abstract, but not entirely..more like they are distorted. There are many recognizable figures within the paintings, some seemingly human and others looked more like animals.

I am particularly interested in how the paint was laid, the brush strokes create fluid patterns of small, colorful, squiggly lines within the bark of the trees; These brush strokes almost remind me of Van Gogh's style. Yet in other areas like the leaves, the color is almost graphically laid out in flat areas


Yet another unlabeled artist in the first room to the right of the main gallery had a couple extreemly wide, short paintings, like an exaggerated rectangle. My favorite is the predominantly black painting with a spacey looking landscape featuring a setting sun in a receded background, illustrated with neatly painted white and neon outlines.

A few human figures are painted in outlines along with a couple other solid figures all of which are all placed pretty much on the same plane and floating about the canvas as if they were not bound to the landscape, but floating in space. It almost seems like they were just placed on the surface of the painting, nothing really recedes into the background aside from a few diagonal lines depicting the ground and walls. This was probably one of the more unique paintings, its size shape, content, and style were distinctly different from anyone else's.


Now the best for last. My absolute favorite artist in the show was also not labeled, however through a little investigation I discovered her name is Betsy Vanlangden. Hers were the photos directly to the right of the main entrance. I was surprised I did not notice them until I was about to leave the gallery, I feel these photos deserved a more noticeable location. I found nearly all her photographs to be very captivating and beautiful. They are all fairly large, I don't know exactly what their dimensions are, but something like 3x3 feet..just a shot in the dark. In each of these photographs the subject is the same woman, possibly the artist herself, but I do not know. Most of the photos are portraits, and only one is a body shot, interestingly with her head cropped off, almost the antithesis of a portrait..potentially this could be a different subject, I cannot be sure.

In none of these photos is the subject in normal clothing, infact she is practically nude, her body is covered either in paint, or with the use of some kind of non-clothing material to make clothing or accessories [ie a cigarette-butt necklace, or a dress made of audiotape]

This is one of the three photographs with her wearing this cigarette necklace..it almost looks like it could be a Truth/anti-smoking advertisement, but even though the subject looks unhappy/sickly and dirty, it is still very beautiful.
Betsy Vanlangen is kind of more than just a photographer, she is using the human body as a canvas, not really like fashion, nor exactly like a painting either. After preparing the body, it is then immortalized in a photo, which is the final work of art. So there is more effort and skill required for these images than just finding a nice scenery and a good composition for a photograph, there is craft involved, work of the hands and imagination are evident and necessary.

As a random side note, when I looked at these photographs, I was immediately reminded of the singer Lady Gaga. Partly I think due to the slight resemblance in the face, and partly because the way her body is covered, the 'clothing' if you would call it, reminded me of Lady Gaga's insanely outlandish fashion sense.