Racheal Larkin’s Untitled (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).
“The future is just around the corner,” says a sign, just around the corner, as one enters the ArtCenter Grad Show at the Pasadena Convention Center. The exhibition will be open to the public on Saturday from 12-5.
By Garrett Rowlan
If the future is around the corner, then the future is a terrain loopy, serious, and somehow familiar. Certainly the primordial and post-apocalyptic landscapes of Mike Boyadzhyan or David Knapp raise comparisons to contemporary films. Familiar, too, are the Raging Bull-ish black and white photographs of boxers taken from a Santa Fe Gym by Mike Ortiz. The video work of Kevin Duarte suggests the framing shots of David Lynch, while Rachael Larkin’s Untitled, showing a man slumped in a shopping cart, suggests the life-like moldings Duane Hanson.
Too numerous to name are the always-captivating designs of cars, living spaces, and public spaces, conceptually pure visions of a future probably to arrive in a less-immaculate state. All in all, it is a riot for the eyes, full of color, all under large orange globes hanging in the center of the space like confectionery suns.
The globes at the ARtCenter Fall Grad Show (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).
Yet a sobering note is found in the Fine Art exhibit just across from the welcoming aphorism above, like Nico Chavez’s precisely hammering nails that suggests dominos about to fall and other works that reflect obliquely on our current state. Interesting, then, to come across, in another section of the exhibit, Lex Liu’s meditation vessel: a glassine shard of an amorphous state intended as a means to achieve “mental peace for the future humanity,” and one could imagine contemplating this singular sculpture as a means to escape the mental bruising of a future likely to be rocky, if survivable.
It was a relief, after winding around the gallery, to stand in front of the party-hardy Dopasphere by Andy Kim, a music speaker that belches smoke with each bass note that thumps from below.
As always, there is plenty to see and absorb, and the collective energy of the artists and designers make the Grad Show, as always, an absorbing experience.
ArtCenter Fall 2018 Grad Show Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm Pasadena Convention Center Exhibition Hall
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