In front of a wall in Green Hall covered with black-and-white digital photographs stands a blood-red nylon rose on a stick. A series of crimson and indigo portraits form the backdrop for a white sculpted hand holding a lightbulb, while a mechanical contraption in the gallery drops marbles through a pipe and into a bowl with a clink of glass.
The Art Department’s “Undergraduate Comprehensive Art Exhibition of Fall 2009 Work,” which showcases student work produced in all art classes from last semester, opened Thursday night in Green Hall. The exhibit is a hodgepodge of artwork that use diverse media such as painting, charcoal drawing, clay and wood sculptures, digital drawing, photography, posters, installations and performance art.
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The diversity in the media used by student artists indicates the changing direction of the Art Department, said Henk Van Assen, lecturer in graphic design.
“Increasingly you see digital work in arts, which shows that the Art Department of Yale is moving in a new direction,” Van Assen said.
He added that though the department traditionally organizes an exhibition for senior art majors in the spring, this fall exhibition welcomes all students — both majors and non-majors.
None of the artists in the show are identified and the artwork is placed in the galleries without a specific organization.
“The display of works without names really makes you think more about the unknown artists without creating any preconceptions,” architecture major Emily Appelbaum ’10 said. “The arrangement itself is done without any hierarchy, which really encourages amateurs to display their work.”
The display area comprises five rooms spread over two floors. A flurry of digital designs in one room are next to neon-colored portraits. A seemingly conventional painting of a woman wearing pearls and fur has real fur pasted on her coat. Abstract charcoal images and figure drawings line the hallways. A wooden settee exposes splashes of blood.
“I am proud of [the students],” Scott Braun, lecturer in sculpture who taught “Introduction to Sculpture” last semester, said. “The majority of them came in without having no idea how to make things. Several of them made things that were way above their heads and I’m very delighted that they accomplished it.”
At the opening reception, Sam Quintal MUS ’10, who created the marble-dropping machine, stood at the door of an exhibition room and asked visitors to pass through so that he could count the marbles in his contraption.
“I am just happy to have my work on display here,” Quintal said.
Student artists interviewed were vague about the future of their art after the exhibition.
“My roommate wants it,” English major Chloe Searcy ’11 said. “He can do whatever he likes to do with it.”
The exhibition will run through Jan. 29.