From March 26 to April 6, the Spingold Theater is holding an art exhibit featuring Post-Baccalaureate painting and sculptures. The gallery includes work by artists Shona McAndrew, Julia Wolfe, Sara Weninger, Eric Edstam and Eung-Sun Lee.
As I walked around the gallery, I was captivated by all the innovative styles of artwork that lined the walls, each containing their own vibrant energy that made me feel as though I were stuck inside the paintings. Each artist had a distinct style and technique that they incorporate in their pieces.
Most of McAndrew’s paintings seem to capture movement and a specific moment in time. Most of her pieces were human subjects, uniquely illustrated in a cubist sort of style, with bright colors that call attention to the caricatures. This adds a sort of layer into the work that could reflect something deeper than just a person, perhaps a hidden story or symbolism contained within the colors and materials of her compositions. One of her paintings that really embodied this idea included a wooden chair with a pink dress on top of it, with other dresses hung all over the room, as if the person in the scene (who is not depicted) were getting ready for a formal event and was searching through his/her closet, trying to find the perfect dress. We can also see the chaos portrayed through the cushions and magazine that are messily thrown onto the floor, with the motion portrayed through the flowing details of the dress and the displacement of the articles thrown all over the room.
Wolfe’s pieces are more abstract, almost surreal, as lines and shapes are interpreted into objects that can be left to each person’s imagination. In her paintings, it seems as though she has been influenced by Dali’s style of artwork. One of the objects in her painting looks like the duck that lays down in pain in Dali’s work. Also, the many other cluttered objects all around the piece, bright with colors of orange and blue and disorganized with squiggly shapes, reflect the chaos that is also portrayed though Dali’s painting.
Weininger’s displays are a series of sketches. All of them are very different in style, but the one that stuck out to me the most was her drawing that resembled something of a demon or monster of some sort, similar to the one in Goya’s piece, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” Weininger also outlined landscapes and interesting still life pictures, each very unique with the different brushstrokes, colors and angles that she decided to illustrate through each of her works.
Edstam’s large compositions are particularly fascinating. Using a style similar to that of pointillism, Edstam creates a human portrait with long green lines that look like birds flying all over the canvas. His paintings, like McAndrew’s also contain that element of movement, as the long lines look as though they are flying out of the artwork, not only making the image look three-dimensional but also brings the body to life.
Eung-Sun Lee’s paintings are reminiscent of abstract expressionist Barnett Newman, as his paintings contain the bright red and blue colors that are depicted as dripping down the canvas, lines and random shapes creating abstract decorations. This contemporary style adds drama to the work as Lee provides a versatile style, not only using bright colors but also pastel ones, illustrating a sort of landscape with pastel colors and shades of pink and orange. The sunset scene that is conveyed through the artwork as though it is influenced by Georgia O’Keeffe’s works, since they both contain the light colors and brushstrokes that flow with a sort of beautiful fluidity.
Whether or not you are interested in art, I recommend visiting the gallery as soon as you can so that you can open yourself up to a different world of art that all these wonderful artists have contributed to in such exquisite and powerful ways.
