As I walked into the SynArts exhibit, quite confused as to why I was there with my English class, an intense abstract painting caught my eye. I am not the type of person who likes abstract art. I normally think that most abstract pieces are just a bunch of crap with no meaning, put on canvas, and then sold for large amounts of money. The piece by Ben Harley and Aaron Gimmell was different than that. The piece was hung on the far left wall and was painted on what looked like a very large notepad that had a red binding at the top. In the bottom left corner of the painting there was a grey cube. From the upper left hand corner of the grey cube were black and white stripes running horizontally. To the left of the stripes, right next to the grey cube was a small yellow square and to the bottom right of the grey cube written in pencil was the words “are here”. Next to those words was an orange triangle and in the middle of the grey cube was a random orange figure which looked as if it was falling from the cube. Above the cube was a lot of dark black shading that took up about half of the painting, this is the part of the painting that caught my eye as soon as when I walked in. The first thing that I thought of when I saw the painting as a whole was that it was one of the world trade centers burning. One of the main reasons I first thought of 9/11 was because of the grey cube that looked like a building and then all of the black smoke coming out the top and billowing all around it. As I looked closer and saw the details it made me think even more that this was what the artist was trying to portray. The grey cube looked like a skyscraper and the black and white horizontal stripes looked like streets and sidewalks. The small yellow square looked like the “No parking” cautions spots painted on the side of the road and the orange triangle looked like the kiosk maps that show you where you are and the way to get to where you want to go. One of the really drastic parts of the painting was the random orange figure falling from the building which reminded me of a person falling/jumping from the building. All these little things around the building made it seem like the city. I think that Ben Harley and Aaron Gimmell made this painting to remind everyone of 9/11. I think they made it such an intense painting because everyone is slowly forgetting about 9/11. They wanted to make an impact on the audience so no one could forget what happened on that day.
After I was finished looking at the first piece I walked towards the back of the room. As soon as I turned the corner there it was sitting on the ground. The piece was not a painting, but a sculpture. At first sight the piece by Alon Wingard scared me. The sculpture was made out of wood which was stained a very dark brown. At the bottom of this sculpture it looks like a wooden boat that is in the process of being built. It looks like the wooden frame that make the core of the boat, except this had no outer shell or anything inside it. The frame went from the bottom of the sculpture to midway up the sides, and then the scary part starts. From midway up there are sharp wooden spikes that stick out from all over. Some of the spikes come out horizontally and in between those there are spikes coming our vertically. These spikes are all different sizes, some coming out further than other ones. At the front of the boat the spikes are shorter than the ones all around the boat. When I took a step back from this piece I had to think very hard as to what this meant. I put a lot of work into my thought about this piece and after racking my brain I finally thought of Noah’s Arc. The bottom, even though unfinished, looked like what I think the arc would have looked like back in that time. The spikes represented God protecting all of his animals and Noah’s family safe from the sinful outside world. The fact that the spikes in the front of the boat were a little shorter made me think that God knew the path they were going, so they didn’t need protection in that area.
It is hard to compare two completely different works of art. You could clearly see that Ben Harley and Aaron Gimmell wanted to get a certain feeling out of their audience. I am sure that not everyone saw 9/11 in that piece of art work, but I am quite sure that the viewers felt some type of anger or strong emotion. I think they made this emotion come out very well because of all the black coming from the picture. The artists had a purpose for their artwork when they were creating it and they achieved their goal. The second piece by Alon Wingard was made to be more of a brain buster. I had to sit and think real hard about what it could be. This was one of those pieces of work made for people to just sit and interpret what they think it is. I think that Alon made the piece not trying to get a certain emotion out of the audience, but just to see what they thought the piece was supposed to be. These two pieces were not only different types of art, but they had two completely different reasons for why they were made.
Although I am not the type of person to study and interpret a piece of art, the Ben Harley and Aaron Gimmell piece made me do exactly that. When I saw it and thought of 9/11, I immediately got angry, but then that anger turned into patriotism. The artists accomplished getting that anger from me; the piece spoke drama to me. I never thought that a painting could have gotten such a strong emotion out of ME. The second piece, although an interesting sculpture, was one of those pieces that are just made to make you think. When I was studying the piece I had to try too hard to come up with my interpretation of what I thought it was. I find this type of piece unsuccessful because it is impossible to interpret. You never get a certain feeling from a piece like this because you are too busy trying to figure out what it actually is. I think that if an artist puts one of their works on display it should be made for the audience, not for the artist. Although not all the pieces were as much as an emotion grabber as Aaron Gimmell and Ben Harley’s piece, I think that this exhibit was not a waste of time. Sometimes it’s better to branch out from things you wouldn’t normally do.
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