Spatial Remediation exhibit

Today I went to Turner Art Gallery and saw Emily Waggenspack's exhibit The Art of Communication: Life as a Comic on Canvas, Envisioning Portraiture. It was really a great showcase of her hard-work and talent as an artist. The exhibit is made up of 78 gesso-painted canvases, which cover almost every wall in the gallery, and the theme followed the artist's life from childhood to college in a literary sense through comics. The canvases depict a child learning how words form, through copying her parents speech patterns; later moves on to comprehending storybooks, and then heads off to school. A heading on each canvas conveys what's going on, and the symbolism (such as teardrops of storybook scenes across the board when the comic is talking about how stories "flooded" in) depicted shows an effort on the artist's behalf to unite both words and imagery. The comic takes a serious turn, as it describes the child's hardships in school (i.e. learning disability) but how that didn't prevent her from success and college. The most moving part of the exhibit is when the story discusses the deep impact of the confusion in school, and being different from other kids (they finished work faster). The canvases in this part are hung in disarray from the ceiling, and a net hangs opposite the side of the wall, so that the reader walks through a tunnel of confusion and emotion; giving a sense of the child's struggle. The other exhibit on show is portraiture, that Waggenspack has taken to a new level. She has shown the steps in the work, first a photograph, then a sketch, and then the final product on canvas. The subjects are Bruce, Lisa Butler, and Waggenspack herself, making drastically twisted, and comical, faces. What makes the portraits so amusing, and interesting, is not so much the funny faces but how Waggenspack decided to cut up each portrait and then rearrange them. The faces can still be discerned as faces, but the interesting arrangements gives a whimsical mood to the work. It's very Braque-type, following the cubist movement, and is captivating. The vibrant colors also add to the whimsicalness of each art work. I think to experiment with such a drastically different medium really shows Waggenspack as a modern artist, not afraid to break traditional art conventions. Overall the exhibits are really well done, and showcase Waggenspack's talent as an artist who isn't afraid to take chances and experiment with different mediums.