Frances Stark Exibition review by Max (Yu Sun)

I went to MIT List Gallery this week after some one told me art works there were a little bit conceptual and hard to understand. Well, my life is full of challenges and I am willing to explore and solve puzzles.

The first impression of the exhibition is that the style is more unified than the "Artists' Books show", I think the main reason is because it is a single artist exhibition. But there are still a lot of diversity nested in the exhibition, for instance, various of materials, various of way of assembling. Also, based on these differences, my emotion can be affected by the author's emotion at the time he was creating them.

Let me started with one of my favorite piece of Frances Stark's works. The name of that piece is "Toward a Score for Load every rift with ore", and I am so lucky that I found it online. The first thing I love about this art is the sources. Stark used daily life materials like letters, shipping labels, recipes to make the collage, and drew a chair in the middle of the collage. I have a feeling that I am sitting on the black chair and trying to handle my everyday life. It is the true feeling, not just from a printed pictures. Second, I was thinking about why he cut all those papers in to incomplete chunks? My very own answer is that he wanted to leave the audience some sort of imagination about the art work, I may say "Nothing is perfect."

The second one I want to mention is the one named "Pretty Ugly". The painting is a portrait girl. When I saw it for the first time with its title on it, I thought that was really ugly. But when I double checked it, I saw the girl's face were formed by flowers. And I think that is why the author called the painting Pretty Ugly. I have to admit the word "ugly" was really leading me to a wrong place at first. But fine arts needed to be watch carefully from itself.

Also, there was one piece that interested me. It was a piece of yellow paper, with a computer directory tree on it. The sub-directory was full of MS Word file. And I found one special file hidden among those Word files. That really took me some time to figure out what was that, and what is the massage the author wanted to pass.

There were few questions in my mind when I am done seeing the exhibition. Most of Frances Stark's artworks I saw were made with daily materials, and he always put things that have nothing relation to each other together to form a new object. The object could be a daily life stuff, or even a creative, assembled invention. But why is the artist think that way? How could he managed to put those stuff together? Were the ideas coming to his mind directly by some inspiration, or he was intentionally doing so? But anyway, Spark's works really give those daily matters a new life, and make them three-dimensioned other than laying on a 2D paper.

That is a great exhibition!

Frances Stark Review - Michael Canavan

I went to the Francis Stark gallery in the MIT List Visual Arts Center on Veterans Day. Because of the holiday, I wasn't sure if the exhibit would be crowded with fans of Francis Stark or empty, with people finding others ways to entertain themselves on their day off. It was the latter. I was pleased because I felt that I could take my time to study her work. And I did have to study her work to try to understand what she was trying to say through her art. I'd like to start off by saying that for the most part I am not a huge fan of her art. What I am a fan of is her creativity. One of the pieces that I am ashamed to say I liked was the "Cat Videos." The "Cat Videos" are a collection of videos that Stark took of her cats in her home. She added different pieces of music to go along with what the cats are doing in each scene. The videos are shown on a television hanging in the gallery as if it were a piece of art. While I hardly consider it art, it does keep your attention. I didn't watch the whole thing but watched a good 5 minutes of it.

One thing that I noticed about Stark's work is that she uses birds in a number of her pieces. The first work that you see when you walk in the gallery is of a parrot standing on a branch. That is all the the work contains. No background images or colors, just the parrot and the branch. It still is an incredible piece of work and will grab your attention. This, along with her other works with birds in them are the works of art of hers that I appreciate. I liked how she used a collage of printed text from various articles to give the branch shape and definition. I don't know what she was trying to say through this piece. Was she trying to say how digital technology is overtaking the printed word in today's environment? Or maybe she was just making a piece of art with no hidden message. I don't know.

One piece that I liked (and I am sure many others liked as well) was "The Inchoate Incarnate: After a Drawing, Toward an Opera, but before a Libretto Even Exists." It was very creative of her to look at an old rotary dial phone and see in it, the image of a woman. What I get out of the work is that Stark believes that many people are addicted to modern technology (mostly cell phones) nowadays. A great number of people deal with others through emails and texting instead of talking to people face to face. Don't get me started with people on the bus talking loudly (cell phone) for all to hear.

The final piece that I really liked for its creativity was the PowerPoint presentation: "Structures That Fit My Opening." Just like the "Cats Video'" it kept my attention for a few minutes. It's sound effect could be heard at various points throughout the whole gallery. I heard them as I first entered the gallery and, at that point, I had no idea from where they were coming. Although the presentation itself wasn't as creative as just the idea of the work, I did enjoy watching it for a few moments. What I did like about it was that once the presentation concluded and started again, the presentation was different. It was not the same every time.

The gallery was smaller than I anticipated which was a little disappointing but I still enjoyed myself while there. For the most part I liked most of Frances Starks' work, aside from one or two that annoyed me. I won't discuss the pieces. I'll just say that I don't like "works of art" that have items of clothes hanging from them. Other than those pieces, I really enjoyed my time at the Frances Stark gallery.

Frances Stark Exhibition - Natthaphol

I once thought that arts have to be only drawing or well-composed photograph but after i went to see the exhibition which what i thought it's real art, I surprisingly realized that anything, any medium can be arts.

In general, arts which were brought to show in the museum were mixed-medium arts. For example, a piece of cloth, paper, texts and as well as drawing.. The interesting point were how does she put those medium together to represent the message that being implied within the artwork.

her artworks ranging from text patterns, cut-paste paper, mixed medium to a dressed-doll.

One of her artwork that i really liked was an artwork named "and also another one at the same time, not". It's repeated phrase "and also another one at the same time, not" drew by ink (i guess).

There were a number of that phrase at the bottom and transitioning into birds but when you're looking at the big picture, you will see it looks like a dense forest and bird in the sky. A text repetitions and variety made a nicely movements. That piece of art really amazed me.

Another artwork that i liked is, "If conceited girls want to show they have a seat". It was a drawing of a little girl in the background acted like she is proudly showing a chair. Foreground was a piece of black and white stripe cloth(i don't remember exactly). It was attached to its background acting like she uses it to cover her face. This help a lot in making 3-dimension feeling.

There are a lot of artworks that i haven't mentioned but actually i like every pieces of those. I really would like to deeply understand what she is telling us in her artwork but i'm currently having a limited proficiency in English... . Some of her artworks contain a poetic meaning such as "Becoming Modestly" and "Modestly Becoming" which were a white-painted girl hiding behind big butterfly with black stripe theme on its wings. Respectively, a black-painted girl hiding behind big butterfly with white stripe them on its wings. Both butterfly facing each other like a mirror sort of. I honestly didn't understand but it's beautiful.

I got a lot of thoughts/ideas in my head after visit the museum and i think everyone is the same, right? It also broaden my vision out further more in term of art and creativity. So, Just keep thinking outside of the box!! people!!

Frances Stark Review- Naveen

I had the first setback at the reception when I was told very courteously that Photography is prohibited inside the gallery and so I had to make mental notes while I went around the space.

From my point of view I found Frances Starks’s Gallery to be an exhibit par excellence. I was drawn towards her collages formed by combination of text, word, writings & images, which seems to be taken from varied collected pictorial source material. The intricately textured collages made with snippets of text and graphic elements finds interrelations between art and literature and image and text. When I entered the gallery I witnessed the diaphanous paper works having a frenetic quality that thematically unleashes the transcripts with sketches and literary appropriations, mesmerizing me to go further ahead.

I left the gallery while debating to myself on some of the thought provoking art work:

An excellent hieroglyphic Paper Collage titled Chorus Girl folding self in half. I found the circles to be a playful use of material to unfold the pictorial language while sharing the mechanisms of the dynamic interaction. Overall the visual appeal of the picture was more profound while concentrating on one circle and others seem to acquire dynamic shifts, to highlight the multiple aspects of life where paths criss-cross again and again.

An image of a peacock collage exhibiting their extravagant tail feathers with text pulled from literature rolls down & meticulously sews together to match the various layers of symmetry.

A mixed media on paper collage of a woman clinging to a slippery pole and a peacock beside her also caught my attention. Both images seem to be crafted out of the artists imagination while the women looks exposed and precarious and the bird imperiously looks the other way.

The In & In Collage is a stack of two papers meticulously arranged with text and images. The images pinpoint the task of sifting through the regular piles of reading followed by the dull process of sorting out the junk mails. The collective art addresses the paradox of reproducing visuals that are non photogenic by nature.

MIT List Gallery - To see and times etc etc etc

I want you all to go to the List Gallery and see the Frances Stark show. Her work is incredible and  I want you all to write a review on it. It will be relating to your final project.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday-Wednesday: 12-6PM; Friday-Sunday: 12-6PM; Thursday: 12-8PM; Closed Mondays and Major Holidays. Information: 617.253.4680 or http://listart.mit.edu
All exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center are free and open to the public.

Directions:

• The MIT List Visual Arts Center is located in the Wiesner Building, 20 Ames St., at the eastern edge of the MIT campus. It is in close proximity to Kendall Square, Memorial Drive, and the Longfellow Bridge.
• By T, take the red line to the Kendall/MIT stop, follow Main St. west to Ames St., turn left, and walk one block to the cross walk. The MIT List Visual Arts Center housed in a building identifiable by its white gridded exterior, will be on your left. Signage is on the building.
• By car, coming across the Longfellow Bridge or from Memorial Drive, follow signs for Kendall Square. Limited metered parking is available on Ames Street. A parking garage is located at the Cambridge Center complex (entrance on Ames between Main and Broadway) during business hours and on campus after business hours and on weekends.