Saturday, August 08, 2009
Arts & Extras: A different perspective
Hollins exhibit questions one's point of view.
Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times
"Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise," an exhibit by Barbara Bernstein (shown pointing in the bottom left corner), is on display at The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum of Art at Hollins University.
Arts & Extras column
Mike Allen, arts columnist
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Barbara Bernstein's exhibit at Hollins University's Eleanor D. Wilson Museum of Art proffers no paintings on the walls, no free-standing sculptures, not even a cutting-edge digitally assembled movie.
The room itself is the exhibit.
Hundreds of feet of black electrical tape crosshatches the floor to create a perspective grid, and foam core stuck to the walls form what might at first seem crude approximations of a bridge and a colonnaded building. A simulated willow tree leans from another wall, made from freehand paper cutouts and about 2,000 drinking straws.
Yet as you move around the room, objects that seem lopsided abruptly line up in perfect perspective, depending on your vantage point.
"Depending on where you stand, your perception and experience change," Bernstein said. She explained that the exhibit, called "Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise," is "an invitation to really question one's point of view."
The objects in question are meant to represent some of the university's most prominent landmarks -- the willow tree near the visitor's parking lot, the Wyndham Robertson Library, the Cocke Memorial Building.
"This was done just for Hollins," Bernstein said. "I really wanted to look at what Hollins had to offer the students that were here."
Site-specific installations
Bernstein, whose work has been exhibited in California and China, had previous experience with site-specific installation, an approach to art that involves temporarily transforming a specific room or interior location.
Bernstein and her husband have been artists in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst since November 2007. Amy Moorefield, the Hollins museum's director, said that when she started the job last August, Bernstein contacted her and introduced herself.
After visiting Bernstein's studio, Moorefield was intrigued by a site-specific installation Bernstein was working on for an upcoming exhibit in Lynchburg. After seeing images of an installation Bernstein did at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and another made during a residency in Rome, Moorefield asked if she'd do one for Hollins.
Moorefield said she was impressed by how Bernstein takes elements from the scene outside a building and uses them in the pieces she creates inside.
The Hollins museum hasn't had this type of exhibit before, Moorefield said.
Bernstein agreed to the project, and over a period of nine days, she and four student interns put the exhibit together.
It opened July 16 to a standing-room only crowd of more than 200.
Afterward, only memories
Voices echo in the room, adding to the unusual effect. Two benches are placed at the center, and Bernstein said she hopes visitors will use them for conversation.
More than 200 cutout birds hang beneath the high ceiling, their arrangement perhaps unremarkable until seen through a second-floor window. From there, they seem to be swooping right at the viewer. Marks on the window glass show that others had recently stopped at the window to check out that view.
And when the exhibit closes Aug. 22, it will be dismantled. All that will remain will be whatever memories visitors might take away from the experience.
Which is how Bernstein wants it to be.
"This is a metaphor of what and how we are remembered when we're no longer here," Bernstein said.
