Two sculptures are having a coded conversation across the room, until the audience walks in and everything shifts. Viewers at McMaster's new art exhibition will experience art that doesn't just exist, but responds and reacts under the weight of attention.
On Monday, Aug. 25, the McMaster School of Visual Art and Design Gallery opened its doors to a new exhibition titled “…and this stays between us, right?” The exhibition is part of the gallery's "Invited Artists Series", and is a collaborative effort by artist pair Taylor Colimore and Noren Gelberg-Hagmaier, working together under the name cyber//chiffon.
Both Colimore and Gelberg-Hagmaier hold degrees in kinetic imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University. The two met as freshmen and have been creative collaborators ever since.
Kinetic imaging is a fine arts major that emphasizes specific areas of art, such as sound performance art, creative coding and video animation. Colimore focuses on video and creative coding, while Gelberg-Hagmaier focuses more on animation along with physical art such as creating sculptures.
At the center of the exhibition, a pair of speakers will engage in generated dialogue through sound, powered by a custom-coded program running on a computer in the gallery. Visitors can see the coding live, creating a mechanical and ongoing conversation between the sculptures across the room. Each artist has their own sculpture that reflects themselves through a material medium.
Colimore incorporated the element of sound through her practice of live coding using a program called Sonic Pi, which will compose music that will fill the gallery, panning from one side of the room to the other. This is to show the conversation happening between the two objects. When a visitor enters the gallery, it will be as if they are “interrupting” the dialogue.
This exhibition carries a conceptual meaning, rooted in the artists's own experiences. The sculptures presented in the gallery are designed to emit noise or turn their lights off when touched, a response to the viewer’s interaction with the sculptures. These responses reflect the artists’ own experience with feeling misinterpreted or dismissed, often based on their own identity and self-expression.
Angeletti Giordano, director of the McMaster Gallery, hosts its "Invited Artist Series", in which artists submit their work, and the selected artists display their work in the gallery, one in the fall and one in the spring. Giordano explained the contrast between the collective name of the collaborators, cyber//chiffon, which relates to both the digital components of the exhibition and the material ones used for the sculptures.
The McMaster gallery director said he believes this exhibition can reveal different forms of art.
“Contemporary artists that otherwise would not be shown in Columbia, showing different ways of making work … and talking about how coding can become part of an art practice ... and showing the variety of work that is out there," Giordano said.
Colimore and Gelberg-Hagmaier’s art exhibition will also include videos that viewers will receive headphones for, explaining the themes present in the exhibition. The themes discussed will include the hardships of feeling trapped by others' perceptions and the struggle of having one's identity assumed based on their perspective.
The work in “…and this stays between us, right?” reflects the artists’ own conversations surrounding their gender identities. Gelberg-Hagmaier is non-binary, and Colimore uses she/her pronouns and is cisgender. The creation of the exhibition was inspired by both artists' experiences of disrespect from colleagues in how they present their identities.
Colimore’s piece incorporates a pink plaid fabric, a material she began working with for her college thesis.
“I don’t know how to really explain it, but I just feel that pink plaid is really intrinsic to my identity and self-expression. I feel that it’s just really representative of me and my personality. So I use that material a lot in my artworks,” Colimore said.
Gelberg-Hagmaier’s sculpture in the exhibition builds on their college thesis, which featured woven pieces that produce sound when touched. The sculpture in this exhibition uses wires with five woven pieces to create a cube. Gelberg-Hagmaier also speaks on the role of color in connection to their gender identity.
“Orange and coral and pink, I feel like were really representative of my identity, which is an interesting contrast because I do feel like pink resonates with me, but to me, that isn’t female resonance, it's just an expression of joy and softness,” Gelberg-Hagmaier said.
The exhibition is an opportunity for students to see new media and expand their view of what art can look like, and prompt others to think on a deeper meaning behind the exhibition, Colimore said.
“I would hope that it would make a student think about how they choose to interact with people who maybe they perceive as different from them … or engage in a conversation with this person that at first seems like they would be really different from you, but you might have more in common than you realize,” Colimore said.
The show will run from Aug. 25, to Sept. 19, and is open to the public at no cost. Visitors can explore the gallery between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.