Since Clemson University annually yields a crop of young, talented artists into the Upstate, it’s always interesting to catch a glimpse of the “masters’” work at the annual faculty show.
This year’s faculty exhibit now up on the wall at the Lee Gallery displays the depth and span of a group that is ideally fostering and challenging a fresh group of artists and thinkers.
Christina Nguyen Hung’s “Border Security Scenario #1” presents the bacterium Serratia Marcescens grown in two petri dishes in the likeness of the United States. The bacteria in the middle thrives off a nutrient rich gel, but is encompassed by bacteria feeding from nutrient poor gel.
The result and message, Nguyen Hung said, is straightforward, if not unsettling: “In that isolated structure, the bacteria eventually runs out of nutrient and dies.”
Pursuing art in academia allows Nguyen Hung to achieve one of her primary objectives, which is to explore the role of the artist in relation to the rest of society and examine exactly what is art. Moreover, she is free to be a little more experimental. See, for example, “Border Security Scenario #1.”
“What this means to me in practice is that I have the freedom, the academic freedom, to make work that is unusual, not easily categorized and, hopefully, challenging,” she explained. “If I were not in academia, I would have to be more concerned about selling work in order to fund my art practice.”
Like Nguyen Hung, sculptor David Dietrich expressed the same contentment with the benefits of freedom from financial worry. Likewise, he selected Clemson over several Northeast and Midwestern universities to avoid landing in an fully mature art scene -- he didn’t want to “preach to the choir.”
The “Kyoto” sculpture Dietrich contributed is an intellectual, lofty work and part of his “Mantra for the New Millenium” series, which is intended to be read as a text examining cliche language through a collection of objects instead of words.
The piece is engaging, if unorthodox, in its seamless blend of a profound message with an equally complicated beauty.
“As a sculptor I am not really ‘making’ anything in the traditional sense of that term,” he explained. “I am merely creating a context for organizing or what I call ‘constellating’”.
Professor Joey Mason also offers political fare, but with a slightly lighter approach. He takes a shot at the thinking world’s enemy number one, George W. Bush, with his piece “StrangeLoveToday,” titled after the Stanley Kubrick movie of the same name about an arrogant and stupid president.
The president in the 40-year old movie acts on his advisers’ advice despite their hidden agendas,despite the consequences for the rest of us.
The parallels are obvious.
Engraved in a thick steel plate set between an image of earth and the symbol for nuclear energy is the famous quote from the movie, “Mr. President, I have a plan.”
Mason also provides two commissioned photographs of forged steel. Surprisingly, the composition is such that audiences will be engaged for far longer than might be expected – providing a subtle captivation from what appears to be a sparse shot.
A product of the New York City gallery scene, Mason came to Clemson and academia for much the same reason as the other profs. And because it’s a far better place to raise a family.
