Art exhibition looks at the creative process
Even to many artists who are creatively engaged on a daily basy, the creative process is a mystery.
“Because I teach painting and drawing, I’m often witness to the difficulties of a creative situation,” said Miami University art professor Dana Saulnier.
To that end, he proposed an exhibiton at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati to take entries from artists about work that speaks to the process, about how creativity is not just about intuition, but “about a lot of work,” he said, and to explore the resistance to creativity that arises during the work.
“Creative work seems to be 90 percent resistance and 10 percent success,” he said. “In other areas we are efficient in our time, but creativity takes you down some alleys.”
Part of the resistance seems to come from an artist’s inability to express exactly what he or she wants to express.
Resistance to Vision as an organizing principle for this exhibition arises out of a number of ideas and observations-- all having to do with thinking about creative practices. A lot of this comes directly out doing creative work, as well as helping others find their own artistic voice. The same thinking also lends itself to an argument that distinguishes the visual in the face of contemporary theories that center on language. For several generations much theory has taken the operation of language as the fundamental framework for understanding cultural forms. The “linguistic turn” in theory is the prevalent mode of postmodernism. This project compiles a set of ideas meant to position “resistance” and “blindness” as productive orientations to the visual. – Dana Saulnier in the introduction to the exhibition catalog
“A person who works from observation, for instance, who is making a drawing of you would encounter some resistance because we can only get so much of you on paper,” he said. “Some things about you are not visible, and that’s hard to render,” so the artist meets resistance.
The call for entries to “Resistance to Vision” generated nearly 350 entries from 130 artists from 30 states and nine different countries. From that, Saulnier selected 16 works from artists in eight different states, including Kenneth Hall of Oxford.
“We wanted to see evidence of the artist’s thinking,” he said. “The idea of trail and error was very important. We wanted to see their choices.”
In a set of self-portraits title "Eight Days, Orange Shirt," for instance, Texas artist Joseph Morzuch painted himself in eight 8-by-8-inch panels, always wearing the same shirt, always with a similar expression.
“Each one of them has a bit of truth,” Saulnier said, but none of the them tell the whole story.
A public lecture by Saulnier to accompany this exhibit will be held 6 p.m. Nov. 29 in room 5401 at the University of Cincinnati, College of DAAP.
A 48 page exhibit catalog features an 11 page curatorial essay by Saulnier.
WHAT: Resistance to Vision: Searching, Sifting, Finding, Seeing
WHERE: Manifest Gallery and Drawing Center, 2727 Woodburn Avenue, Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Dec. 7
COST: No charge
MORE INFO: (513) 861-3638; http://www.manifestgallery.org
