The art market is overheated. Prices are rising, as is interest from deep-pocketed investors, and, simply put, art is becoming trendy again.
At a time when Art Basel is creating a circus out of Miami, and Chelsea dealers like the Feuer gallery sign on graduate students, the School of Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) Thesis Exhibition, on display at the Tufts Art Gallery through Dec. 16, is particularly timely. Not because it celebrates the "freshness" or youth of its artists, but because it demonstrates that an art career is not just a flash in the pan but represents a lifetime's worth of growth.
The artists in the exhibition are all enrolled in the SMFA and Tufts' graduate joint-degree program, and though this is in itself a notable achievement, the art presented here is only a starting point. In this exhibit, the artists sketch out ideas, explore different methods of art, and touch on a few trends in the contemporary art world.
What is particularly interesting in the SMFA Thesis Exhibition is that the artists' installations share a fellow-feeling, a kind of sympathy for each others' work and practices. The idea of art as a symbol, the physical manifestation of a split between the surface of things and their core meaning, runs throughout the show.
Lawrence Getubig has involved himself in the current outbreak of staged photography. Instead of working in the grandiose, over elaborate staging practices of Lorca DiCorcia or Gregory Crewdson, Getubig's staging creates a kind of stylization that is meant to mimic the visual drama of comic books.
His artist statement explains that as a gay Filipino man, he uses the often-silhouetted figures as stand-ins for himself and his sexual ideal of the white man, exploring the relationship between the two through their poses and actions.
This creation of physical metaphors as symbols is a particularly postmodern practice. The comic book pages may look slick and glossy, but behind their fa?§ade is a representation of the problems of exoticism, gay culture and racism. His work feels vibrant, dramatic and topical and does not shy away from either aesthetic pleasure or social problems.
Janine Biunno uses flat visual images as symbols to refer to a particular place and time - in this case, Boston. Her screen-printed piece stretches horizontally across a wall of the gallery, a kind of frieze that, similar to those of ancient Greece, creates a narrative. The images, bridges, planes, buildings and other urban spectacles create not only an enticing visual rhythm, but a psychological space that evokes personal memories and experiences. Her work is a representation of her "constantly changing perceptions of this city."
An exploration of the space between a visual metaphor and reality is also evident in Rebecca Bird Grigsby's work. She installs a reproduction of the Parthenon that calls into question the difference between a replica and the real thing.
Though we most likely have not seen the Parthenon in person, we have seen pictures. We know what it looks like, we know what it is, but does that truly mean we know it? Grigsby's work presents more questions than answers.
Though video art has been quickly gaining speed and credibility in the art world, it still calls to mind the clichés of badly filmed performances. Cathleen Faubert undermines this entirely. She has created a kind of Baroque video installation, filmed principally in a set made of cotton candy. Clothed in a pure white dress, she repeatedly jumps into a floor filled with pink fluff. The piece looks bombastic, ever-moving, ever-oscillating somewhere between unrepentant hedonism and a critique of the same.
What place do these graduate students have in the art world? They are on the starting blocks of a marathon, not yet mature in their careers but armed with the tenacity and vision to make a mark. The SMFA Thesis Exhibition is not exactly avant-garde, but rather, it's the artists stretching to find something new and uniquely personal.
MFA Thesis Exhibition
At the Tisch and Koppelman Galleries, through Dec. 16Tufts University Art GalleryAidekman Arts Center617-627-3518
