“At Close Distance: Labyrinth of Self” (33 E Congress Exhibition)

Columbia College Chicago’s latest gallery exhibition “ At Close Distance: Labyrinth of Self,” at 33 E Congress features interdisciplinary artwork from Columbia’s own graduate students. All of the work explores the question: how do our journeys, from past to present, shape our beliefs, our identities, and our relationships to our environments? Laura Elayne Miller is the curator of the exhibit, along with assistant curator Eliza Fogel. The exhibit opened on November 11, 2009 and will be open until February 13, 2010, on Mon-Wed & Fri from 9-5 and Thurs from 9-7. A reception was held on November 13, 2009. The space itself is not very large and without the question presented by the artists much of the work would not seem to go together.

When you enter the gallery everything is set up in a rectangle, with art work placed along the outside on the walls and then some more work is place in the center of the room. Featured artists include Jennifer Hines, Colleen McGann, Kelli Cousins, and Teresa Pankratz. One of my favorite pieces of the entire exhibit would be the work of Jennifer Hines. She presents acrylic paintings on digital prints, such as her Personal Growth: purple roots with leaves piece. The work displays a girl sitting in the fetal position with intricate leaf line designs extending from her hands and feet. The line work appears to be very precise and clean, with vibrant colors of orange, green, and purple. Another interesting piece includes the work of Teresa Pankratz, called Marissa learns of the fire: She’d had no premonition. The work consists of hand cut intaglio prints, which were placed into a mixed media construction. The piece explores objects lost within a fire and allows the viewer to understand the significance of small objects, such as a nail clipper, and how those objects effected and shaped our lives. Both of these artists seemed to go along with the theme of the entire exhibit.

Some of the less appealing art included that of Kelli Cousins, who merely set up three which canvas boards, and made some sounds on a tape player to accompany it. The viewer is supposed to walk up to the piece and listen to the sounds while looking at the white boards. Personally, this piece did nothing for me. The sounds she made were awkward and random. They seemed like a poor attempt at wind and other abstract noises. Not only are the noises horrible, they last forever, wasting at least 5 minutes of valuable time. Some of the other art included photographs, and other three dimensional objects. The gallery also displayed little television screens, with headphones, but sadly none of the screens were working.

Most of the work gave me no insight to the relationship between the past and present, or whatever deeper questions the exhibit was trying to ask. The exhibit is a good way for students to get there work seen, but it also makes Columbia look bad. Besides one or two pieces, the rest of the work seemed pretty armature. Maybe the television screens would have been impressive if they had been working.