BY rené reyes

art by isaac deleon

I must be honest with you guys. I'm not too seasoned at going to these types of things. I have a very low attention span, so identifying nuances in a piece of art is like me identifying my own traumas: not pretty.

I go to these types of things to check out some modern pieces of mumbo jumbo, that would either reflect or distort whatever it comes from. I got something different with this. What I had imagined was some shit that would take me into the 4th Dimension, but maybe that's just me expecting some psychedelic experience to reinforce the stigma that that’s what people are supposed to get from art. If the shit costs thousands of dollars, I'm hoping this thing can do some tricks. 

The big names that grabbed my attention like Takashi Murakami, Salvador Dalí, and Banksy just didn't do it for me. From what I've seen of early Murakami, his work can be very sporadic and fun to see. Creating another world to dive into, but what I saw here felt very recycled. Dali and Banksy gave me more of the same. However, going to this exhibit I got another perspective that was intriguing enough for me to write about. 

One of the dudes I went with was feeling this piece by Vee Spears, Immortal 2. The way he described it made it seem like he had seen some modern-day Mona Lisa or whatever. Except instead of her staring at him, he couldn't stop staring at her. He described details of the piece (which I'm sure the hostess lady pointed out to him) going on about the uncanny valley, with the woman's complexion and hair being almost angelic, but her humanity still presents itself within the folds of her stomach and the ribs poking through her back. When I saw the picture, I didn't notice any of this, but he clearly saw something I couldn’t.

The concept he was describing to me made sense. I didn't have anything to invalidate his takeaways (which I shouldn't be doing anyway) and he guided me to look at the picture in a different light. It wasn't crazy visually, but the details he described made it feel immersive, yet I was forced to reflect upon myself. Still, based on my first viewing, I think it left me underwhelmed, but I was lucky enough to have someone that was not afraid to talk to me about their experience and put it in an unpretentious way. 

This experience was somewhat refreshing, in ways that exceeded the actual critique of the art and more of the discourse between how I felt with another observer. That's what I love too, when we can talk dumb or passionately about something that moved/bored me, without having some numbskulls give me a weird look about my opinion. But what I’m saying isn’t to move or entice you away from the experience of the art, but to give that other guy like me a chance to explore other types of thought processes. I would like to go to another exhibit and try to look at the pieces differently, without expecting a kaleidoscope of imagery and meaning, but more about how I feel within the moment.