Contemporary Cool and Collected at the Mint Museum

I viewed the new Mint Museum exhibit Contemporary Cool and Collected yesterday. A good exhibit...though I wish it were a little stronger on painting. Here are a few of my favorite highlights:

Lalla Essaydi, Converging Territories #7

Chromogenic print, 30x40"

What an absolutely stunning piece! Here's a statement about her work from http://www.aperture.org/ :

Lalla Essaydi's photographs deal with a rebellion against the limited domain of the female within Islamic traditions. As noted in Nazar: Photographs from the Arab World (Aperture, 2005), according to Islamic tradition, the street is the domain of men, and women are condemned to live indoors. Behind closed doors, they are nothing more than decoration, suggests Essaydi, a situation she that she vividly represents in Converging Territories, which appeared in the spring 2005 issue of Aperture magazine alongside a text written by Isolde Brielmaier. Essaydi places Islamic women in isolated spaces and literally decorates them with texts written in henna. The texts-a reversal of the silence of their isolation-give the women a voice, with which they can speak to the space and to one another. The rebellious character of the photographs is magnified by the fact that within Islam calligraphy cannot be practiced by women. Converging Territories, #30 was photographed in the house where women and girls from the artist's family were locked up, sometimes for weeks, when they transgressed the rules of Islam. Essaydi herself was sent to this space as a youth; escorted by silent servants, she would be left alone for up to a month. As Isolde Brielmaier notes, "her intention and introspection are evident in her photographs: we see Essaydi turning 'space' into something more than just the delimited enclosures of that house of her childhood." Brielmaier goes on to say that "at a time when many images in circulation portray Arab people in increasingly negative ways, Essaydi reclaims and reconsiders ideas of what it means to be Arab and female on her own terms."

Shana and Robert ParkeHarrison, Mourning Cloak, photogravure, 55 x60"

The info card by this image states that the butterflies "act as a shield, protecting Everyman from his empty existence; or implies a richer existence by interacting with the natural world." As I looked at this I couldn't help but wonder why the Chrisian symbolism of butterflies isn't mentioned...it's a clear symbol of resurrection.....

Tony Oursler, Invisible Green Link?, aluminum, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player

I love it when I get surprised...it's not necessarily a new idea for the artwork to cause you to reverse viewpoints and recognize yourself as the work to be viewed; but I wasn't expecting it for some reason.

Stephanie Pryor, Untitled (painting light blue background), acrylic paint and acrylic ink on gessoed board.

A lovely little poem on canvas. Beautifully crafted and suggestive. But I'm sick of pieces titled Untitled.

The Elizabeth Murray painting Split and Join is probably my least favorite of all I've ever seen of hers. I got a kick out of Tara Donavon's Controlled Caging, and of course, Josef Koudelka's Untitled (Coal Mining Started in the Region around the Year 1400) was haunting to me. All in all, a worthwhile show. Take some time and enjoy it :-)