Artist Comparison

By far, my favorite piece in the exhibit was "Smoke Knows" by Pae White. This piece is apparently one of a series of tapestries with photographic aluminum and clouds of smoke appearing digitally. There is this incredible sense of elegance that comes with the whirling smoke. White's inspiration for the piece was cotton's "dream of becoming something other than itself." She accomplishes this theme by pairing an immaterial object (the image of smoke) with the physical and very real sheet of black cotton. It's absolutely gorgeous and almost has a seductive quality to it. Her strength lies in using an everyday image of both smoke (perhaps cigarette smoke?) and a sheet of cotton. These everyday objects are literally transformed into a sense of longing and I personally feel that the artwork has a sensual and sexy quality to it.
Another beautifully elegant piece that I adored was Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher's collaborative project called "Better Dimensions." Both artists wanted to present a narrative story. The images were projected in a room by walled in sliding panels. At first there is an image of JFK's bust, and if I remember correctly, it was rotating. There are gorgeous organic images that are caused by painted slides. These images move across the room. I feel that it brings an almost alien quality to the piece. After some research, I found out that the text and graphics are based loosely on the American Illusionist Black Herman and jazz musician Sun Ra. By using both of these artists, especially Ra who claimed he went into outer space, the two artists create an incredible virtual and visual poem. I'm not really sure what was going on politically during the time of JFK (besides Vietnam) so I'm not necessarily sure what the political connotation is.
The artists, I feel, created incredibly elegant pieces by using video, projections and slides. However, White used a black cotton sheet and the projected images of smoke moving onto the cotton. She created a very sensual piece that projected themes of longing onto the viewer. I also loved her idea, allowing cotton to transform itself into a cloud of immaterial and digital smoke. Cleine and Gallagher created another elegant piece, except it obviously had some kind of political connotation. However, what I loved about it was the organic images moving around the wall which was created by painted slides. It was gorgeous. I didn't really care, if you will, that I didn't understand what the point was. Like I mentioned before, it was stunningly gorgeous.



"Smoking Knows"





"Better Dimensions"