Color: Fully Engaged

Disappointing, unsatisfactory, second-rate, substandard, and tacky.  These are words that I would not use to describe the art show Color: Fully Engaged.  The show focuses on color and color theory through different mediums and what people experience as a result of these colors.  Every artist took a different approach to this theme.  A different idea, a different medium, and each gave a different reaction.  Two of my personal favorites where the works of Jeanne Dunning.

Dunning’s had two pieces in this art show, Red Edge with Food and The Edible.  The Red Edge with Food shows an extreme close up of someone’s skin and a thick red liquid.  These two images combine at the center with a harsh strait horizontal line.  The mind immediately believes that the skin is hurt and bleeding.  The stomach twist itself with the familiar sickening feeling that one gets when seeing a particularly gruesome wound.  The other piece, located to the right of The Red Edge with Food titled The Edible, does not give the viewer a more pleasant scene.  There is a kind of thick peach colored ooze that’s been twisted and coiled around a person’s chest.  It gives the spectator the idea that they are looking at a kind of intestine. 

The effect on the viewer is like that of spectators looking on at the aftermath of a car crash.  It’s something you shouldn’t just stop and gawk at but for some reason you can’t tear your eyes away.  The need to know more about these pieces is overwhelming.  And, another wonderful thing about this show, you can know more.  Beside the artist name or work you will find a sign that has the author explain something, read a quote, or simply read about what he or she was thinking about when making their pieces.  Dunning explains that what we are seeing is simply food on skin; it is not blood or some kind of bizarre ooze.  What makes our minds believe that it is, is different colors can be related to different things we already know. 

Dunning showed a mastery of understanding how the mind can conceive colors.  After reading about the pieces I went back to look at the artwork again.  I assumed that now that I had information that I didn’t before I would have a different reaction.  I anticipated that it would be like a magic trick, only magical when you don’t know how it is done.  This was not the case in the Red Edge with Food and The Edible.  In fact, the information that you read on it only seems to intensify how amazing these two pieces really are.  For you can still see the blood and the oozy intestines.  To declare that I was impressed is to say the very least.  And these where only two pieces out of the entire show.

A feast for the eyes as well as the mind, Color: Fully Engaged at Averill and Bernard Leviton A + D Gallery (619 S. Wabash Ave. 1^st Floor) is a must see.  From videos to paper buildings each artist brings something unique to this show.