ArtCenter Graduation Show 2022 (Photo – Garrett Rowlan)
After a hiatus, the ArtCenter graduation show returns as a public event.
By Garrett Rowlan
At the exhibit hall in downtown Pasadena, the graduation presentation showcases some of the work produced by ArtCenter’s 295 spring graduates, divided in 15 areas of expertise.
Walking through the dazzling display of art, design, and vision, one feels time has been advanced farther in the future than the two years since the last group of graduates’ work was on public display. Whether this is due to the pandemic or other events, more than 24 months seems to have passed.
“What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness,” says a credo projected on the wall in the Spatial Experience Design section of the exhibit. Indeed, the state of consciousness seemed a paramount concern, mental comfort seemed a corollary in the linear, spacious design in miniature houses, or modular desks illuminated by tube-wrapped lights, or the promised bliss of a bottle of floating cologne in the Fine Arts Graduate Art.
Across the hall, in the touchy-feely Interaction Design, the concern with one’s inner state reached solipsistic levels, as around the semi-circular display, bar-like presentation flat screens, headphones, and a virtual reality station promised either an individual escape from a reality beyond the exhibit’s halls or, through technology, better ways to cope with it.
Still, there was the comfort of the familiar tropes of the Film Graduate section, Evan LeBlanc’s cyberborg creations, or Rita Li’s Hall of the Mountain King-like temple, while Aleza Zheng’s triptych called “The Room,” presented in the Illustration section, suggested that refuge was only a shut door away.
Charming, too, was the chess set of runic-like figures designed by Aziza Tanjung.
Perhaps optimism came from where it might be less expected in Transportation Design, with the emphasis on cars and limos run on electricity and even, in Frank Guan’s visionary sketches, cars running on carbon.
All in all, one leaves the hall with the feeling that the future is already here. It just needs to be born.
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