{"id":11841,"date":"2016-08-25T18:52:16","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T22:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=11841"},"modified":"2016-08-25T18:52:16","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T22:52:16","slug":"beyond-sculpture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/beyond-sculpture\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Sculpture"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 2016 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Meet the Maine artists whose work dares to jump traditional boundaries <\/span>and transports us into the unexpected.<\/span><\/h3>\n

Spotlight on the void<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

\"SEPT16-Beyond-Sculpture\"Taiwanese-born Maine artist Ling-Wen Tsai,<\/strong> 46, does it all, fusing her talents in painting, photography, and video imagery with installation and performance art. As Associate Professor and Chair of the MECA Sculpture Program, Tsai engages crowds with her ephemeral, fourth-dimensional approach. \u201cIt feels inadequate to try to define sculpture. I want to push against definition. I like to explore sound, space, emotion.\u201d In particular, Tsai\u2019s installation work concerns itself with interactive experience and audience participation. An exhibition entitled \u201cSitting Quietly,\u201d which was shown at Coleman Burke and the UNE Gallery in 2012, exemplifies her preoccupation with silence and absence. Audience members are invited to enter a circle of stools, put on noise-cancelling headphones, and just\u2026sit. \u201cI wanted to remove the expectation of being entertained. By taking away any external distractions the audience is rewarded with silence and space. You create this private, individual space in a public area. It invites introspection.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The artist\u2019s current project is a series of 12<\/span>“<\/span> x 12<\/span>“<\/span> panels covered with single words or basic sentences written entirely in binary code, entitled \u201cBinary: silent, still, void.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

PAST PROJECTIONS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

When Portland Magazine<\/em> first interviewed Frank Menair<\/strong> in 2007, he had just surged onto the local art scene with his striking photography project, Projectotrain<\/em>. Nearly 10 years later, Menair, now 41, continues the vivid process of capturing images projected onto the sides of passing train cars at night\u2013a method that \u201ccan take literally months to get one image.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Menair\u2019s approach has evolved over the\u00a0 <\/span>intervening years as the artist has lived and learned. He\u2019s introduced an industrial strength projector; flash bulbs have replaced the heavy and costly strobe lighting units (\u201cI used to borrow them and invariably break them\u201d); and perhaps most significantly, he\u2019s switched from film to digital photography. Other changes have been more conceptual, won from years of consideration and development.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBack at one of my openings in 2011, an artist I hugely admire, mp Warming, approached me and said, \u2018I like what you do, but you\u2019ve gotta do more. You need to create a unity between the environment and the content and context of your photos.\u2019 I mean, I guess it\u2019s not considered polite to speak to someone like that at their exhibition opening, but I appreciated it! I\u2019m a lot more thoughtful now with what I do.\u201d With this in mind, Menair has attempted to tie his \u201cpathological obsession\u201d with trains into the context of his recent images. This has included projecting a large portrait of Amtrak Downeaster founder, Wayne Davis, something of a personal hero to the artist, onto a traincar. The theme of family still dominates the ongoing Projectotrain<\/em> project as it did back in 2007, although \u201cIt\u2019s never easy, because my family is now scattered all over the globe.\u201d The artist\u2019s early exhibitions memorably displayed snatched images of an empty vodka bottle and an urn, references to the artist\u2019s father\u2019s passing in 2003. \u201cAs a former professor once told me, \u2018The more personal you make it, the more universal you make it.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Listening In<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Enrolling at MECA in 2010, Robert Bennett Jr<\/strong>. originally planned to pursue a major in painting. However, the freedom of expression that Tsai\u2019s sculpture program offered soon drew him in. \u201cUnlike painting, I had no preconceived ideas about sculpture. It was an open book for me.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Bennett Jr. combines both sound and performance installations to create pieces that question \u201chow much history is found in any given space.\u201d Using printed silkscreen drapes and bone-conducting exciters\u2013transducers that use direct vibration of the skull to convert surfaces into speakers, emitting recordings of fellow artists reading aloud\u2013Bennett\u2019s 2014 thesis show, They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, <\/em>attempted to establish human connections between artist and audience. <\/span><\/p>\n

Since graduation, his work has deepened into \u201cexploring soundscapes more and more, as well as performance art. I\u2019m currently planning a project entitled With Me<\/em>\u2013I\u2019ll attempt things like lying down in public and waiting until someone lies down next to me. I don\u2019t really think anyone will. I want to show that difference between your needs and expectations\u2013the imperfect reality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 2016
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