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