#modularity – Becks and the City

[ORIGINALLY WRITTEN MAY 2015]

I hit up quite a few galleries this FF, and here are my favorite highlights:

Mystery Mart at Quirk Gallery

Quirk had an array of vendors selling their goods in the parking lot by their gallery. From handmade jewelry made from scavenged antiques to homemade candles that smelt like tobacco and black pepper to stuffed toys that looked like part conjoined twin, part robot, the Mystery Mart had a lot to offer. I spritzed myself with some rose-scented perfume and took myself a free sticker 🙂

Next, I moved on to VCU’s Graphic Design Senior Show at 419 W Broad St.

One student’s art displayed photographs of students with different expressions and it asked the viewer to guess the model’s emotion. Another looked like a giant piece of bubble gum holding up a basket ball. What I noticed about the Graphic Design exhibits was that they seemed to be mostly about aesthetics. Instead of trying to get some sort of message from the works, I just decided to have fun just looking at them.

I saw another collection of student art at 300 W Broad St. It was a great variety of art. One of my favorites was Pollylops by Claire Lee. It had three different baskets of lollypops, each representing a different fear: rejection, regret, and loneliness. Each basket had a pair of headphones connected. When you put them on, you would hear audio of someone explaining their fear. For example, the fear of rejection audio had a girl talk about how she is afraid that if her extremely religious parents find out she isn’t Christian anymore, they will reject her and disown her. The stories were stories anyone could relate to in some way. Here are the rest of my favorites from the exhibit:

Lemons on a Pink Towel by Remy Ciuba

Ada Gallery was displaying art by two different artists. The first was Bruce Wilhelm, which seemed more like prints/graphic art.

The second artist was Alex Kvares, and I absolutely loved his art! It was full of chaos! From a distance, it seems like it could be illustrations from a children’s book like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but when you look closer, you can see gruesome details like decapitated heads.

Ghostprint Gallery had an exhibit by Catherine Brooks called “Signores et Symboles” which featured fantasy art and some strange wall pieces with eyes painted on the inside of oysters. It was very magical and odd.

Candela Books + Gallery displayed “Heliopolis” an exhibit by artist Daniel Leivick. His art was SO COOL. It was my favorite exhibit of the night. He took satellite photos of landscapes and neighborhoods and played with them to make really interesting works of art.

Visual Art Studio featured the exhibit “Modularity” by a group of VCU art students. “From conceptual to literal, we have created our works solely based on the theme, ‘Modularity’. The group has been started from the simple desire, “creating looks following my own taste and decisions.”” (from the pamphlet that was at the exhibit).

Broken by Changhyun Yang

Light House by Yoora Hwang

Fat Bunny Number 12 by Sung Joo Byun

Gaze by Jinny Shin

November Brown by Song Han

Cloud by Jeesoo Park

I finished the art walk at Gallery 5 which was hosting VCU’s Senior Communication Arts Show. The art was amazing, there were free buttons and an abundance of cheese and crackers. (I admit, I went a little overboard with the cheese)