The Art of 2011

A Year of Unexpected Strangeness

“The unexpected strangeness of the moment.” Artist Dario Robleto used those words to explain the qualities he sought in his art, exhibited in the Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) “Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens.” His phrase works just as well though as an explanation of the year 2011 in Des Moines’ art scene. It was a year in which unexpected media such as dirt, projected light and neon often stood in for paints, when green eggs and lasers became sculpture, when worldly artists like Bill Luchsinger unexpectedly turned their visions upon local subjects, and when Stephanie Brunia’s girls in white underwear, Tom Jackson’s children with guns and Jeremiah Elebl’s decapitated humans became subjects of exceptional exhibitions.

The year ended with an unexpectedly strange controversy. Half a century after Andy Warhol placed low culture’s signage (Campbell‘s) on the walls of high culture’s grandest palaces, local paragons of elite culture raised a public fuss about Subway’s signage on Subway’s own venues, at least when they were visible from the perspectives of high culture. Still excellence stood out amidst the strangeness:

Artist of the Year - Sarah Grant’s exhibition at Olson-Larsen demonstrated a new clarity, as if the artist simply intuited when less had become more. Her new work was also more narrative and less abstract than in past years. A ten year retrospective of Paintpushers, almost all artists who were recruited here and employed by Grant, further demonstrated her extraordinary influence on the city’s entire art scene.

People of the Year - TJ and Jackie Moberg nearly doubled the number of artists in their Moberg Gallery stable, salvaged the defunct Art Store’s inventory, saved all the jobs of that company’s employees, opened Moberg Framing, Moberg Editions (an online gallery selling inexpensive art) and Moberg Consultations (a full service firm that directs clients from design to installation of artworks). TJ also worked on a major installation at Prairie Meadows.

Painter of the Year - Matthew Kluber’s series of abstract “paintings” in his DMAC exhibition fused color, line, digital formations, and projected light to create dramatic visual spaces that embraced new technologies.

Exhibition of the Year (museum) - German Anselm Reyle’s exhibition at DMAC introduced Iowans to the contemporary German scene, where in the artist’s words “Cologne is the past. Berlin is the future.” Chrome, bronze, piano lacquer, plinth, aluminum, glass, neon, electric cables, rust, plastic, LED lights, and wood veneer hung out with more traditional Modernist media.

Exhibition of the Year (gallery) - Travis Rice’s “Contamination” became the largest one person show ever at Moberg, taking up the entire gallery plus an outdoor wall. It was inspired by a sci fi film was about alcoholism, green eggs and coffee, in which the green eggs plotted to take over the world.

Exhibition of the Year (non-traditional venue) - “Jeremiah Elbel” at Mars Coffeehouse exhibited a monstrously talented young artist’s black and white, tar and charcoal portraits of decapitated humans - some Mexican drug war victims, some victims of Islamic terrorists, others of Shari'a, or French law.

Design of the Year - InVision’s two story, glass and steel addition to the Iowa State Veterinary Teaching Hospital glowed like a sanctuary on a storm-plagued prairie. It finally presented a coming home platform for Christian Peterson’s iconic statue “The Good Doctor.”

New Artist of the Year - Madai Taylor painted with earth, red dirt of the South and black loam of Iowa, mixed with gesso. That paint was applied in layers on which he scratched while they were drying, much like the plows of agriculture scratch at the same dirt in its natural environment. He process becomes a unique form of shorthand - a primitive scripture.

Rising Star - Stephanie Brunia, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, became DMAC curator Gilbert Vicario’s latest discovery. That museum showed a series of her prints that mimicked classics like Leonardo‘s “The Last Supper,” Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” and John Everette Millais’ “Ophelia” with decidedly modern, edgy takes of young girls in white underwear.

International Times

Future is Now in Two Brilliant Shows

Two local exhibitions show off the talents of innovative young international artists staking out territory in Post Modern history. Anselm Reyle and Jesse Small both work dialectically, creating a new kind of art by pushing old icons and clichés into seemingly disparate contexts.

Forty year old German Anselm Reyle, whose exhibition plays the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) through April 17, is a new kind of German artist who is proud to be part of the rising art scene of Berlin.

“Cologne is the past. Berlin is the future now,” he explains.

Reyle mentions Americans such as Jeff Koons, Barnett Newman and Gene Davis as influences while distancing himself from superstar German artists like Anselm Kieffer. Although one “Untitled” Reyle piece resembles a Kieffer masterpiece in the DMAC permanent collection, Reyle disavows any connection and points out differences - mainly those of mood. He is a rather gleeful German artist and no one ever accused Kieffer or his generation of much projecting much glee. Reyle admits to other contrary attitudes.

“In my painting education, painting for effect was completely discouraged but I always liked such tricks. As a child my mother prohibited me from using paint by numbers formats. Now I use them for effect. As a child I was only allowed to play with hand made wooden toys. Now I play with all kinds of flashy toys and neon games,” he said.

Reyle frequents flea markets in search of materials and thinks the next big new thing might be an old thing with a new paint job. DMAC Director Jeff Fleming calls him “a taxidermist breathing new life into exhausted or dormant visual motifs.” Reyle’s art in DMAC’s exhibition includes chrome, bronze, piano lacquer, plinth, aluminum, glass, neon, electric cables, rust, plastic, LED lights, and wood veneer - as well as more traditional Modernist media.

“I am particularly interested in typical things - clichés from another era of Modernism like African sculpture and cave paintings. I see clichés not as negative things but as connections,” he said.

Reyle says his mother has come around, somewhat.

“She accepts my work and is glad it is successful. But she only accepts it as irony,” he laughed.

Small’s exhibition reveals a distinct new phase of an evolving artist. The 36 year old now splits his time now between studios in Los Angeles and southern China. His earlier work resembled Reyle’s in the way it tried to squeeze playful new interpretations out of old humorless icons. Small built a reputation for embellishing weaponry with high gloss glazes that made objects of brutality into ornaments of frivolity.

Even today he says he can take his porcelain bombs through customs because the ornamentation disguises their identity.

Small no longer goes to flea markets though. He makes everything from scratch now, even plastic robots that might embellish his chandeliers. And everything he makes is now fully functional.

“Getting away from American culture, I realized that objects that are readily recognized in America, such as Jeeps and army helmets, have obscure meaning elsewhere. In China, people thought my army helmets were bicycle helmets and just thought it weird that anyone would make a bicycle helmet out of porcelain. So while working in China I got interested in more internationally recognized symbols and found that video games were pan cultural and pan generational,” he explained.

“Now I think I am going more for the throat of ornamentation. I am now actually making the items themselves - actual folding screens and chandeliers. They might be stylistically quite different but they are still functioning in their traditional fashion,” Small said.

That sets up a dialogue between the art and the gallery viewer.

“Is it a chandelier or a sculpture about a chandelier? And if it’s a chandelier, what is it doing in an art gallery?”

Go ask for yourself. Small exhibition continues at Moberg Gallery till March 18.