Mary Ann Papanek-Miller - Looking for Alice: You Won't Know Who to Trust

I recently saw Papanek-Miller's new show Looking for Alice: You Won't Know Who to Trust at NIU's Jack Olsen Gallery. In short, it was underwhelming. Her style of layering images and cartoon is initially appealing, but loses itself to its technique, without suggesting something deeper. There is an obvious surface attention to narrative, but it seems a borrowed one, a distilled childhood made of disturbing cliches.

Certainly some of her compositional work is successful, the "and a bear passed by" series 1.1-1.3 particularly. But there is a forced inclusion of an environmental awareness that seems out of place, in addition to occasionally shoddy draftsmanship. The deeply entrenched childishness of the imagery is belied by the conservatively modern framing and occasionally jarring inclusion of an odd-man-out in a series of panels.

To be generous, the pieces are generally well executed and fun, if not exhaustingly repetitive. Her other layered works are far superior, both in composition and sophistication. This show is more a study of a technique than an expression of ideas, so if inchoate, forgivable.


"Looking for Alice, You Won't Know Who to Trust, 1.1."



more works can be found at Ms. Papanek-Miller's site

Step Up and Behold!

Hand Waving!

Prestidigitation!

Snake Oil!

Wowee Gee Whiz!

Welcome to the Art Gallery!

Magic Secrets

There are magic secrets in the canvas, in the stone, in the music. The artist is scared, and a liar, and yet the thread of truth winds its way out of the dark corners and displays itself, subtle and nuanced, but visible to the discerning eye. The artist cannot hide, does not want to hide, but even if they try, they are on full display to the world.

The Art Carnival, part II

We find ourselves in an ever-growing parade of predicates with which to describe our art. Not just new art, not just avant-garde, or post-this, or neo-that. But with each new struggle, by each new artist, there is a new non-that with which to look backwards and compare all the art that has been done.

Ingres is not himself in a vacuum, nor is he accompanied solely by his contemporary peers. We can see him in the same light that we view Lichtenstein. As non-Lichtenstein. And vice-versa. Lichtenstein is not only himself. He is also non-Ingres. And he's also non-everyone else.

And it's an ever-expanding collection of nons. It is not some gerrymandered coterie of elitely chosen members that determines our art, but an always growing, almost ashamedly inclusive group, that is recursive in its self-reference; with every new piece is ten thousand new conversations and the relationship between it and everything that's ever been.

The Art Carnival

Art is an evergrowing carnival of stylistic predicates.

Ingres:



Lichtenstein: