The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Thursday, February 19, 2015 — 3B

Slusser Gallery is a 
work of art in itself

By CATHERINE SULPIZIO

Senior Arts Editor

Rarely does the gallery itself 

merit pause. Designed with mini-
malist tendencies, the soundless, 
white and still space is designed 
to be invisible. Yet its works of art 
are guided by an organizational 
system that straddles the line 
between art and logic. The proper 
gallery setup veers neither toward 
thematic homogeny nor discord, 
instead tracing through lines of 
internal logic from one piece to 
next.

Hidden in Penny Stamps School 

of Art and Design, the Jean Paul 
Slusser 
Gallery’s 
wide, 
light-

washed space is gentle respite from 
the industrial, tunnel-like halls 
that surround it. When I walked in 
last Monday, the faculty show was 
on display. Unlike a themed exhib-
it, the faculty show is not bound 
by any unifying message — yet the 
works still gracefully orbited in 
similar systems.

I drifted by a vibrant teal tap-

estry by Sherri Smith, knit with 
the skittering, arachnid-like fig-
ures that the early 20th century 
astronomer Percival Lowell’s saw 
embedded in the surface of Mars. 
By weaving these alien figures into 
the household texture of tapestry, 
the work’s textile expanse melds 
the distant and domestic, breath-
ing new life into the dusty chroni-
cles of sci-fi and homemaking.

Perpendicular to this was a 

triptych of woodcuts by Kath-
ryn Brackett Luchs, in which a 
central plank of birch wood was 
carved into veiny simulacra of 
a tree’s texture. Bold swaths of 
ink are transposed on the bark-
like surface, and then pressed 
into reversed prints that flanked 
the original. A painting next to it 
by Nora Venturelli was similarly 
interested in vibrational records 
of originals, with its innermost 
female figure morphing into 
increasingly abstracted repre-
sentations.

This fluid effect is tricky to 

produce; after all, the gallery is a 
carefully balanced composition. 
The composer of this particular 
collection 
is 
Mark 
Nielsen, 

the exhibitions specialist for 
Penny Stamps’s three galleries, 
which 
together 
display 
a 

continuous stream of shows 
per 
year, 
including 
faculty, 

juried 
undergraduate, 
MFA 

and Integrative Project shows, 
as well as one or two shows 
featuring outside artists.

Nielsen doesn’t have a ready-

made formula for the art of exhi-
bition, but says it usually hinges 
on a killer — the killer being, in 
Nielsen’s words: “that one piece, 
that no matter what you put it 
next to, eats it alive.” Once he 
finds that place for it, “it unrav-
els the rest of the problem and it 
starts to come together.”

In our cultural milieu, the gal-

lery occupies a germane locus of 
intersection between art object 
and audience.

“The artist can spend so much 

time in their studio, agonizing to 
produce this work, yet it doesn’t 
really exist until it’s in this pub-
lic space,” Nielsen said.

And the public space alters 

the art object.

“Art can be altered so much 

by how it’s installed,” Nielsen 
said. “Imagine you had this mar-
velous painting but it was hung 
kind of crooked and the light 
wasn’t quite hung right. On the 
converse, you can take a paint-
ing that is not genius, and exhi-
bition makes a huge difference.”

Unlike 
the 
museum, 
this 

crossroads is temporary, fold-
ing itself away into the archives 
after a few months. Where the 
museum looks behind its shoul-
der for reference, the gallery is 
a polestar for the vanguard. To 
Nielsen, this emerging talent 
is the most exciting artist fea-
ture — someone who is becom-
ing a name and who will one 
day name the Slusser Gallery as 
a place they showed at in their 
early career.

And because the Slusser Gallery 

doesn’t follow the traditional for-
profit model, the gallery doesn’t 
operate under the strictures of 
commission or choosing market-
able work. Instead, the gallery is 
a resource for education, allow-
ing students to learn firsthand the 
many operations that undergird 
the pristine, white and effort-
less gallery façade. The school 
has an exhibition committee that 
includes faculty, graduate students 
and at least one undergraduate 
student.

“Part of my job is to help stu-

dents start thinking about exhibi-
tions and what it means,” Nielsen 
continues. “From painting the gal-
lery walls to calling the artists to 
deciding what the labels are going 
to say to working with a designer 
and P.R., the game moves as you 
play it.”

Beyond practical demands, the 

gallery also must register shifts 
in aesthetic ethos, such as the 
changes the recent change in the 
school’s administration brought. 
The previous dean had a liberal 
approach to art display, believing 
“too much art wasn’t a problem.”

“We used to do an undergrad 

and graduate show,” Nielsen 
recalls. “300 students would 
show up with art and I would 
have to figure out how to install 
it in three galleries.”

The new Art & Design dean, 

Gunalan Nadarajan, has a differ-
ent philosophy.

“He is interested in thinking of 

the galleries as a place of honor and 

precious resources,” Nielsen said. 
“They’re one of our biggest ways to 
show the community and potential 
students what the school is.”

Now the school does a juried 

show, selecting 50 to 60 works 
from around 100, which creates 
a more streamlined exhibition. 
The trick in organizing these 
broad shows is to create a sense of 
rhythm between the works, which 
Nielsen does by alternating medi-
ums and hanging everything on a 
centerline.

But as Nielsen noted, the good 

art still finds a way to stand out.

“Your work is going to be in 

a room with a lot of other work 
that is visually stimulating. Why 
should anyone look at yours again? 
The best art is a process where the 
artist is going out to some extreme 
edge and presents the work as evi-
dence of that disturbing or amaz-
ing experience,” he continued. 
“I’ve worked as a director, as a 
curator, as a jurist, as an exhibition 
specialist, and it comes down to if 
it is something that I want to keep 
looking at.”

Beyond just seeing, Nielsen 

views art as a conversation.

“If you’re really developing 

large bodies of work,” Nielsen said, 
“it produces a synergistic energy 
where different sides of that explo-
ration present themselves to you.”

Nielsen sees this multi-pronged 

exploration as a model for art itself. 
Creativity, to him, has referents in 
wide swaths of disciplines, from 
engineering to business to the 
humanities. In fact, this potential 
for intersectionality is the quality 
that could affirm both fine art and 
the world’s future.

“Our culture’s dependency on 

economic growth means that as 
we turn more of the natural world 
into objects, we have a situation 
where we’ve altered the composi-
tion of the earth,” Nielsen said.

“Fine art is that one aspect 

that is not concretely defined 
in our culture, and that gives it 
an incredible amount of free-
dom. These artists, who see 
the world differently, can act as 
canaries in the coal mine and 
jump forward into the future 
enough. They can have critical 
response.”

As the surrealist artist André 

Breton wrote, “The artwork has 
value only insofar as it is alive 
to reverberations of the future.”

MUSIC COLUMN

Kanye vs. Kendrick 
for hip hop’s title belt
S

even and a half years 
ago, Kanye West erased 
50 Cent’s name off the 

A-List, beating him in a head-
to-head sales competition and 
sending 50 
into a spiraling 
fall towards 
cultural irrel-
evance. It 
might seem a 
little hard to 
imagine now, 
but in 2007, 
50 Cent was a 
dominant force 
in rap. He was 
about to release 
the follow up to The Massacre, 
one of the biggest-selling hip-hop 
records of all time, and while 
Kanye’s previous Late Registration 
was also an enormous hit, it has 
still sold over 2 million fewer units 
than The Massacre. That’s why, 
when both West’s Graduation and 
50’s Curtis were both set to come 
out on the same day in September 
2007, it was entirely conceivable 
that 50 Cent would debut at num-
ber one.

But that’s not how it went. Grad-

uation sold over 300,000 more 
copies than Curtis in their first 
week of sales, and the maximalist, 
hit-filled and critically acclaimed 
album would go on to further 
cement Kanye’s status as a top-tier 
artist and prove that rap music 
didn’t have to conform to gangsta-
rap conventions to be commercial-
ly successful.

Kanye West has made a career 

off proving himself to be bet-
ter than people expect him to be. 
When people thought he was just 
a producer, he released The Col-
lege Dropout and Late Registration 
in back-to-back years, beginning 
his career as a solo artist with two 
beloved all-time classics. With 
Graduation, he went toe-to-toe 
with a huge star and came out vic-
torious. After that, even though 
people were initially taken aback 
by his experimental use of auto-
tune and sparse electronic produc-
tion, 808s and Heartbreak went on 
to become hugely influential on 
hip hop and pop music. Then, West 
became a national pariah when he 
interrupted Taylor Swift’s accep-
tance speech at the 2009 VMAs, 
but after a time of seclusion he 
returned with his best and most 
ambitious work yet, My Beauti-
ful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Since 
MBDTF, he’s only rapped circles 
around Jay Z on the pair’s collab-
orative Watch the Throne and cre-
ated the deconstructive, abrasive 
punk-rap masterpiece Yeezus.

But this year, Kanye has pos-

sibly met his match in a young, 
intellectual artist from Compton. 
A rapper, yes, but one who prefers 
to be referred to as a writer. After 
building a solid following through 
his promising mixtapes, Kendrick 
Lamar blew the hip-hop world 
wide open with 2012’s good kid, 
m.A.A.d city, an instant-classic 
monster of a record that garnered 
universal praise and compari-
sons to rap benchmarks like Nas’s 
immortal Illmatic. Lamar has yet 
to release a follow-up, but he’s 
kept himself in the public eye with 
sparing releases, from 2013’s con-

troversy-igniting call-out “Con-
trol” to last year’s anthem of love 
“i.” Kendrick’s fearless talent and 
ambition have positioned him as 
Kanye’s number-one challenger 
for the title of “Best Rapper Alive.”

And don’t think the two aren’t 

aware of the competition. Lamar 
neglected to include Kanye on 
his shortlist of hip hop’s greats in 
“Control,” and Kanye — an artist 
who’s made a track with practi-
cally every A-List star, from Katy 
Perry to 2 Chainz — has yet to work 
with Lamar. Yes, Lamar opened 
for Kanye on The Yeezus Tour, 
but by most accounts, the two 
barely interacted. As a New York 
Times mid-tour profile of Lamar 
notes, “a mentor-mentee relation-
ship wasn’t what was expected or 
desired, and it certainly was not 
what was happening.” And some-
how, I don’t think it’s a coincidence 
that Kendrick surprise-released 
his new single, “The Blacker the 
Berry,” the day after Kanye gave 
a great new performance of his 
own new song, “Only One,” at the 
Grammys. I’m sure there’s loads 
of respect between the pair, but I 
don’t see Kanye ever inviting Ken-
drick over for dinner with Kim and 
Nori.

A genre as centered on the 

individual as hip hop lends itself 
perfectly to these kinds of rival-
ries. 2Pac vs. Biggie. Jay Z vs. Nas. 
Kanye vs. 50 Cent. Whether there’s 
actually animosity between art-
ists or not, hip-hop fans love to pit 
their favorites against each other, 
both within specific songs (who 
had the better verse on “Fuckin’ 
Problems,” Drake or Kendrick?) 
or within larger narratives (East 
Coast vs. West Coast). Rap’s roots 
are steeped in its artists making 
names for themselves through 
boasts about their own prow-
ess and disses of their opponents. 
Though straight-up call-outs in 
songs are more rare than they 
were 15 or 20 years ago, practi-
cally every rapper today will men-
tion wanting to be “the best in 
the game” multiple times in their 
songs. Kendrick proclaimed him-
self King of both the west and east 
coasts on his “Control” verse, and 
though that doesn’t cover West’s 
native Chicago, I think Kendrick 
will be angling for true national 
domination with his next release.

So with new albums looming 

from both artists, who’s going 
to win? It’s very tempting to say 
Kendrick. Rap is, after all, a young 
man’s game. We’ve seen Jay Z lose 
his fastball, Eminem struggle to 
stay relevant and many other pop-
ular artists from the last decade 
(50, Snoop Dogg, Nelly) fade into 
commercial obscurity. While I 
don’t think Kanye is suddenly just 
going to disappear, it’s difficult to 
see where exactly he can go now. 
His new work with Paul McCart-
ney has been mellower, seemingly 
more pop-oriented than his Yee-
zus material, a potential sign that 
he’s settling into artistic comfort 
(although his recent performances 
have still been barrier-breaking 
must-watch events). With a new 
family and his fashion line likely 
taking up more and more of his 
time, it’s possible that he could 
gracefully cede the spotlight to 

someone else. But at the same 
time, this is Kanye West we’re 
talking about — West is a man who 
has never once doubted his own 
abilities, and he has yet to deliver 
a record that didn’t completely 
change the rap landscape.

All of the pressure to exceed the 

bar that’s been set, then, is on Ken-
drick Lamar. Though his talent 
is undeniable, one classic album 
doesn’t yet prove that he can be the 
future of hip hop. Where exactly 
he’s going with his new material 
is uncertain, as the previews of his 
album we’ve seen so far are wildly 
divergent. Several months ago, he 
released “i,” a soulful, Isley-sam-
pling statement of love and togeth-
erness. On the final week of “The 
Colbert Report,” Kendrick served 
as Colbert’s last musical guest, 
debuting a new song that sounded 
like beat poetry and focused more 
on explicit socio-political themes, 
with a refrain of “We don’t die, we 
multiply” appearing to refer spe-
cifically to recent police brutality 
against Black people in the United 
States.

Now, with “The Blacker the 

Berry,” Kendrick has stunningly 
fired a poison-tipped arrow into 
his own heart. The song is frustrat-
ed and prideful, with undercur-
rents of self-hate. Though Lamar 
may be pointing the finger in the 
wrong direction, “The Blacker 
the Berry” carries the kind of bold 
controversial message that any 
other A-Lister would run far, far 
away from. (Well, except, perhaps, 
Kanye West.) It seems almost 
unfair to compare it to West’s 
“Only One.” Both come from 
extremely personal places, but 
“Only One” is auto-tuned singing 
is soft and lovely, and “The Blacker 
the Berry” ’s verses are unfiltered, 
venomous, righteous anger. They 
further augment the potential 
divide between the two artists.

It’s tough to get a read on 

exactly where West and Lamar 
are both trending. By virtue of 
his working with McCartney, 
it’s easy to imagine a much more 
radio-friendly upcoming record 
from Kanye, one that will posi-
tion Kendrick Lamar as the 
“realer” champion of the people, 
and therefore the better rapper. 
However, even though Kendrick 
has given us some of the most 
serious, most poetic hip hop of 
the last few years, songs like “i” 
and his old breakout hit “Swim-
ming Pools” show that he’s also 
not afraid to take his message 
to the top of the charts. To earn 
the title of “Best MC Alive” in 
2015, West and Lamar will both 
have to perform a balancing act 
between popular relevance and 
powerful content.

We’ll have to wait a little while 

longer to find out which MC will 
exit 2015 as the victor, but one 
thing is for certain: Kendrick’s 
potential is limitless, and his 
hunger is palpable. Kanye will 
have to pull out another world-
beating record if he wants to stay 
on top.

Theisen refuses to include 

Drake as a potential contender 

in this battle. Direct your 

outrage to ajtheis@umich.edu.

ADAM 

THEISEN

SINGLE REVIEW

Sufjan Stevens, one of the 

most dizzyingly ambitious art-
ists, steps down for a moment 
and delivers a 
hard-hitting, 
but 
cleansing 

perspective 
on 

“No Shade in the 
Shadow of the 
Cross,” the first 
single from his 
upcoming Carrie 
& Lowell album. 
Unlike 
much 

of 
Stevens’s 

recent work, “No 
Shade” is entirely 
non-electronic. 
Instead, it’s a straightforward 
folk song, sung prettily by Ste-
vens with a slightly distort-
ed distance in his voice. His 
abstract, emotional imagery 
and melody recall acoustic sing-
er-songwriters like Vashti Bun-
yan and Elliott Smith.

“No Shade” forces you to 

take a deep breath, calming you 
with its faintly nostalgic mel-
ancholy. Though musically, the 
track doesn’t stretch itself, Ste-
vens’s voice seems to be yearn-
ing for something more. In an 
interview with Pitchfork, the 
Michigan native talked about 
his mother and stepfather, for 
whom Carrie & Lowell is named, 
saying, “I’m being explicit about 

really horrifying experiences in 
my life, but my hope has always 
been to be responsible as an art-
ist and to avoid indulging in my 
misery, or to come off as an exhi-
bitionist.” If “No Shade” is any 
indication, Stevens’s new record 
will be weighty, personal, per-
haps a little emotionally tough 
to listen to, but significantly 
rewarding.

-ADAM THEISEN

B+

‘No Shade 
in the 
Shadow 
of the 
Cross’

Sufjan 
Stevens

Asthmatic Kitty

ASTHMATIC KITTY

VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily

Exhibition Specialist Mark Nielsen hangs artwork at the Slusser Gallery.

TRAILER REVIEW

The trailer for “Mommy” 

opens with a mother’s pow-
erful declaration to prove 
love can fix all. 
Later, 
erratic 

shots track the 
yin and yang 
of 
her 
son’s 

destruction and 
her attempts to rein him in. It 
promises deeper probing into 
nature’s most fiercely inti-
mate relationship.

And all this ruined by One 

Republic’s “Counting Stars” 
blaring overtop. Paired with a 
woman’s hysterical sobs, you 
almost wonder if the movie 
is supposed to be funny (hint: 
it’s not). Trailers have mere 
minutes to snare interest, so 
everything must align under 
one concentrated vision. This 
song’s lyrics may match, but 
it’s too radio-friendly, too 
diluted by its associations 

with solo in-car karaoke and 
dance-alongs at parties to 
possibly invoke the film’s seri-
ous mood. The second song, 
Ellie Goulding’s “Anything 
Can Happen,” is less offen-
sively off-kilter, but it still 
doesn’t quite fit. The music 
choice yanks “Mommy” com-
pletely away from its thematic 
course, toppling what once 

would have been a successful 
trailer.

Perhaps the intent behind 

using popular music was to 
connect with a wider audi-
ence, but let’s remember that 
this is a film shot in a one-
to-one square ratio. It knows 
it’s not a blockbuster. So why 
doesn’t its soundtrack?

-VANESSA WONG

C+

‘Mommy’

Les Films Séville

LES FILMS SÉVILLE

