You have to appreciate an artist or curator (or in this case, both) when over the course of your discussion, they reveal such witty and honest observations like, "I'll seize upon an opportunity, and then just assume that I'll figure out the details later." This sounded quite familiar to my style. But then, there's a transition to this laugh-out-loud confession. "I overestimated the appeal of this theme, as well as the number of people who know what the word 'quotidian' means. I could have used 'commonplace' instead of quotidian, but I liked the idea of putting a highbrow word into the title, and quotidian still preserved the alliteration." These quotes that roll off her tongue reveal the complexities of hosting an arts event in all its glory, and speak of the curatorial process of this show.
The quotes above belong to none other than artist-curator-author Tamara Fox, who created the Clusterf*ck: Craft, Kitsch & the Quotidian exhibition. She has been contributing lively conversations around the topic of art in our community since she arrived here from Chicago. I am reminded as we speak that the show says just as much about the curator as it does the art.
This exhibition brings national and international artists like Thomas Allen, Sheryl Budnik, Sara Christensen Blair, Tom Duimstra, Tamara Fox, Alice Gadzinski, Alaina Grace Clarke, Alex Gilford & Greer Pester, William Mayer, and Kristin Underhill to the Division Avenue Craft House gallery.
The show is wrapping up with a celebration of the artists and works they have presented in what I can best describe as the best show to be inspired by Jerry Saltz' coining of the term “Clusterfuck aesthetics. According to Fox, "clusterfuck aesthetics" is "one of the best monikers I have ever heard employed in contemporary art criticism (and I wish I had thought of it myself)."
This show also exhibits strong roots in Detroit artist Mike Kelly, who recently took his own life last year on the eve of a major exhibition of his work. (Rapid Growth took a bus load of folks on our last GRR2DET project to see this show and heard first-hand from the curator the challenges of mounting Kelly’s final exhibition.)
“Mike Kelly was a practitioner of the clusterfuck aesthetic and employed these techniques in his installations, which included all kinds of manufactured or hand-crafted stuffed toys, like [Red Hot Chili Peppers'] Flea’s pants -- the ones covered with stuffed animals,” said Fox. “So there are several regional links to this idea in this show that in the end, resulted in a collection of works by local artists that is actually a more sophisticated response to the theme than I had imagined when I began this project.”
Fox is already working on plans for another show with the Gaspard Gallery in May 2013. We can no doubt expect something just as thrilling as this show. Don’t miss the closing; you only have Friday night and then it is over.
Admission: Free
More Info