If we're not professional critics, we generally go to an exhibition, look at the works, maybe focus on one or two, and if we're not in the market, go home. Although trained as an art historian and critic, I made a visit to Rebecca Olsen's show entitled "Gaslighter's Guide to the Galexy" at Blue Star in San Antonio, stayed an hour, socialized for awhile, looked at the works, and left to go home, but I went home a changed lady. The impact of the show as a whole, and its many complex parts continued to resonate over the last two days: it summed up exactly what I have been feeling about our present world for the past six months.
An instillation of many parts in many media seemed random and confusing at first, and there were many components in it that I may have skipped or don't recall seeing, but I wanted to write this not about each specific particle, but as an aggregate of a visual experience and its message to me. In doing so, I deliberately ignored the small artist's statement and catalogue. I wanted nothing except the show and myself.
There were two very dense collages, the first, a mountain of gesturing hands, letters that seemed to come from posters, and various groups of figures, the second, roughly Texas-shaped, of various humans, again some hands, a Guy Fawkes mask, a jumble of photo fragments seemingly smashed together. It struck me as a view of all the events and confusions of our environment, right here, right now.
There was a gilded, padded comfortable armchair recliner that bristled with many straps: a comfy, soft electric chair, maybe? Or a plush prison of complacency? There were pedestals and trays scattered around, and many plaster pairs of hands, at least one with zip-tie handcuffs (there were also souvenir cuffs to take home available). In these hands and on some of the tables were imitations of cell phones, inscribed with manifestoes, or maybe random thoughts.
The biggest component was two seated male mannequins on upholstered chairs in black suits, each wearing a gasmask, connected to each other by their breathing tubes. The one to the right had his hands clenched on the chair armrests, the one on the left clutched a cellphone. Suspended on these gasmask tubes was a tuxedoed ventriloquist's dummy, designated by the artist as "Marco Rubio." The only other specific figure was a small guy in a spacesuit suspended above them by fishing wire, named "Elon Musk." Behind them, pasted to the wall, were strips of paper, each with a progressive word or phrase, each one crossed out. A jumble of large red and black letters lay on the floor beneath their feet. Under the patent leather shoe of the man on the right was a tiny globe.
On the walls were other 2-D images, predominately in black and white, of various sizes and media. And against the gallery walls and out on the floor, more stuff, at first glance amusing, and then fraught.
When I as an art historian, and teaching studio students, I would tell them: "once a work of art leaves your hands and your studio, it's no longer yours." It then belongs to everyone who sees it, and everyone will see and experience it differently, informed by their own life experiences. Art is visual communication, and its success is determined by how it resonates with those who see it.
Rebecca Olsen's show had a run of only a few weeks at a small corner gallery in a much larger exhibition area--and basically only open on weekends. It deserves a more visible venue in a really big city, and maybe a limited run, in littler towns. It expresses what our country is, right here and right now, in all its cacophony of imagery and sound--far more than any one individual can process. It needs to be seen. And thought about.
