Beliefs, like shapes and colors, fill our world in various
forms.
Tonight, beliefs portrayed through art will fill the New Wight
Gallery with various shapes and colors in the UCLA art
department’s exhibit titled “to believe much more than
that.”
Five UCLA art graduate students are curating the Kinross
Building’s first exhibit, showcasing the artwork of 16 art
students from schools around Southern California, all focusing on
belief.
The curators, Stephen Olabode Fakiyesi, Karl Haendel, Amy Hood,
Dawn Kasper and Antonio Puleo, chose the theme of
“belief” as an antidote to the cynicism that they feel
has characterized a lot of contemporary art.
“Maybe this is coming after Sept. 11,” said Haendel,
a UCLA MFA student. “But we wanted to get artists who
aren’t afraid to believe, who aren’t afraid to be
emotionally involved.”
The art being showcased involves media from performance art to
pencil drawings and DVD installations, all presenting the diversity
of beliefs.
“Some artists work with religious belief, some draw from
cultural belief or personal investigation, some work is more
political,” said Hood, a student in UCLA’s curatorial
studies program.
Zachary Davis of Claremont Graduate University taps into the
complex issues of religious belief with his character “Holy
Roller,” a sermonizing, sick-healing evangelist. Complete
with guitar and Southern accent, Davis will perform throughout the
opening reception.
But belief as religious or political conviction is just one form
of the word. For the curators and artists, belief is also the more
abstract idea of having faith and daring to believe in the world
beyond the probable.
“The theme of belief is a way to get into artwork in a way
that’s not ironic, not critical, in a pure way,” Hood
said. “It allows us to investigate that leap of faith that
artists take.”
One artist takes that leap of faith to proverbially kiss the sun
in her photograph “Solar Kiss.” In this piece, Emilie
Halpern of Art Center College of Design shows the sun shining
against the silhouette of a woman, giving the appearance of the sun
on the woman’s lips.
“The exhibit is saying “˜to believe much more than
that,’ to believe much more than everyday life allows us to
believe ““ to put our trust in something that cannot be
proven, that puts us in a position of potential
disappointment,” Haendel said.
But the difficult part of putting together the exhibit
wasn’t addressing the complexity of ideological beliefs or
even taking that leap into the improbable. According to Hood, the
difficult part was choosing the art from the large pool of great
art the curators found.
“To just cut people out was really hard, we discussed the
work that we saw and there was so much great art, but we had to
limit ourselves,” Hood said.
The art that was chosen had to be limited even more than
previous exhibitions at the former New Wight Gallery which were in
Dickson Art Center. The art department has been temporarily
relocated while Dickson is under reconstruction. According to Hood,
the new space is much smaller and more of a challenge to work
in.
The exhibition, however, allowed the curators to explore art
from other schools and to be acquainted with their
contemporaries.
“It really helps us foster dialogue with other artists and
see what kind of work is out there,” Hood said.
“We’re just trying to engage in building an artistic
community.”
One such artist is Nzuji De Magalhaes, a recent graduate of USC,
who is showcasing an installation of over 200 small pieces of art
called “Souvenirs.”
As sworn enemies, Trojans and Bruins aren’t supposed to
mix, but De Magalhaes laughed when the subject of school rivalry
came up.
“That’s only sports ““ the arts are very
sweet,” De Magalhaes said. “Working with UCLA has been
an opportunity and an incredible journey that’s about to
start. We’re all graduating and we’re all going to be
in the same world for a long time.”
According to Haendel, curating this event has offered him
valuable experience and connections with other artists that
can’t be obtained in a classroom.
“Art is an experiential process,'” he said.
“You don’t go to grad school for learning, you go for
the experience.”
ART: “to believe much more than that” will have an
opening reception tonight from 5 to 8 p.m. and will be showing in
the New Wight Gallery through Nov. 7.