A dark gallery is packed with people trying to understand the concept of “Nothing Something,” an exhibit which revolves around the ideas of creation and destruction.
Senior graphic design majors Ben DuVall and Brian Mark teamed up to communicate the idea of creation and destruction with their unique exhibit, “Nothing Something,” in the Marilyn Werby Gallery in the School of Art Galleries.
Duvall said that “Nothing Something” was inspired by creation narratives and the idea of having to destroy something in order to create it just as the gods have done. Mark said it took he and DuVall three days to assemble the exhibit.
The exhibit focused on various subcategories such as science, Taoism, Norse Mythology, Greek Mythology and Genesis, with each category having its own piece in the exhibit.
Most people were drawn to a computer screen in the Greek Mythology section that displayed the website greekcreation.info, a site created by Mark and DuVall. The interactive website works by pushing one key that causes pop-ups to appear, leading to more pop-ups that together explain the story of the Greek creation.
After trying to create multiple posters for this section, Mark and DuVall decided a website would be more fitting.
“After a couple iterations we finally realized the thing that works best for it is actually a website because of the hyperlink nature of the Greek relationships and the tree of creation,” DuVall said.
Another exhibit featured this week was senior photography student Nina Lodico’s exhibit “When I See You,” in the Max L. Gatov Gallery West.
“All my work is based off of real life experiences like things that happen in the past and things I see, and how that affects me,” Lodico said.
She said her favorite part of the exhibit was the video portion that featured a soft-focused video in front of a chair and a pair of headphones.
The blurry video was of a naked woman shifting in a chair accompanied by audio of a woman’s voice explaining her relationship with a man that goes from innocent to hinting subtly of prostitution.
Lodico uses her own voice for the film because she said it makes the piece more personal than still, soundless photography.
The third exhibit was in the Max L. Gatov Gallery East, and featured graduate student Brian Parkhill’s “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” exhibition, which focused on the many roles Parkhill plays as well as emotions he feels on a day-to-day basis.
People were drawn to the corner upon entrance, where they were met by photos of a wide-eyed Parkhill, accompanied by others of him smiling, angry or inquisitive. They were of all different sizes and arranged thoughtfully.
“You go through these things [emotions] all day in a seamless transition; you’re one of these things [and] at the same time, you’re all of these things but then sometimes you’re none of them,” Parkhill said.
The final exhibit was graduate student Marty Knop’s printmaking artwork in the Dennis W. Dutzi Gallery, where Knop’s work combined art with mathematics.
“I was trying to combine ideas of cognitive linguistics and ideas around number theory,” Knop said.
Through the use of Mathmatica, a computational search engine, Knop said he was able to create graphs and grids that he translated into videos, panels and canvas paintings with unique designs, patterns and colors.
This myriad of expressive artwork will be on display in the Fine Arts student galleries in the FA buildings until Thursday.