Visual Art – Page 3 – The Oberlin Review

Fred Wilson Intervenes at AMAM Sculpture Court

September 9, 2016

This year, everyone who walks through the front doors of the Allen Memorial Art Museum will be confronted by an unexpected sight. The King Sculpture Court is full of imposing, broken statues. They may look like something from another time and place, but they have really come from nowhere farther than our own town and campus. This collection of sculptures is Wildfire Test Pit, one of the two exhibitions currently on display at the Allen by contemporary artist Fred Wilson set to remain until June 20...

“Inside” Takes Players on Minimalist Journey

September 9, 2016

In the middle of a dark forest, guided forward only by sparse patches of light, a little boy makes his way toward an uncertain goal. In this beautiful minimalist world, his way is sometimes barred by puzzles — none difficult enough to ever pose a significant barrier. In that sense, Inside is simple in its depiction of its protagonist’s journey through a bleak world; it consists of moving forward and overcoming obstacles. But to fault the game for being so straightforward would be to ignore i...

New AMAM Exhibit Promises Time Well Spent

September 2, 2016

While Oberlin students spent this week finding time in their schedules for classes, the Allen Memorial Art Museum was also tackling the idea of time. The museum has organized an exhibit called Time Well Spent, which opened in the Ripin Print Gallery in late July. The exhibit showcases pieces, mostly drawn from the Allen’s own collection, that represent aspects of time ranging from the cycles of the seasons and times of day to memory, mortality and the role of time in creating art. Andaleeb Banta, w...

In “Clash Royale”, Fun Prevails Despite Freemium Model

Avi Vogel, Columnist

April 22, 2016

Filed under ARTS, Visual Art

There are 10 seconds left in the match. My opponent and I each have one tower left. Mine has a little over 100 hit-points, and there’s a swarm of little skeletons coming my way. My opponent’s base has 200 hit-points. There’s no way to get any of my units there in time. I deploy a unit to reveal my next card. Drawing “fireball,” I quickly throw the projectile at the opposing tower. With mere seconds to spare, the tower goes down right before my opponent topples mine. For my struggle, I get a couple more trophies. But I don’t mind. It was a good use of three minutes of my time. This is the rhythm of Clash Royale, a real-time strategy-tower defense hybrid mobile game for Android and iOS devices and develope...

Tran, Bhattacharyya Illustrate Asian Histories

Julia Peterson, Production Editor

April 8, 2016

Filed under ARTS, Visual Art

For College seniors Gaby Hurtado-Ramos, Anders Villalta, Sreyashi Tinni Bhattacharyya and Richard Tran, engaging a wider community both through and beyond the art that they create, is critical. That prerogative comes through in their senior exhibition, I Will Not Be Buried, which opens today at the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts and will run until Sunday evening. The four Studio Art majors, recognizing many related themes in their artwork, chose to collaborate on a show. “One of the reasons we were really attracted to each other’s work is because not only [do] we challenge dominant narratives, but ... we see art as one of the many tools to do so,” Bhattacharyya said. “It comes from a place of respe...

Screenshot Show Challenges Curatorial Norms

Julia Peterson, Production Editor

March 11, 2016

Filed under ARTS, Visual Art

Exhibition Initiative’s Screenshot Show, opening this Sunday at Storage gallery, looks to question preconceptions about digital art and blur curatorial boundaries. The show’s concept is simple: display screenshots that people have taken on their digital devices in a gallery setting. This leaves room for participants, curators and visitors to interact with the showcase in a unique manner. College junior Leah Newman, the organization’s co-chair, said the screenshot medium creates room for participation by people traditionally denied access to gallery spaces. “We put out a call to artists that invited anyone to submit their own screenshots for the show,” Newman said. “I interpret this idea as ... not ...

Nguyen Blurs Line Between Candid and Staged

February 19, 2016

Holding Water, the current exhibit at the Richard D. Baron ‘64 Art Gallery, is deceptively simple at first glance. Unlike many art shows. in which each piece is accompanied by a title and a short paragraph with contextual details, the photographs by Duy Phuong Le Nguyen — Oberlin’s artist in residence for the month of February — stand alone. For his first solo show, the artist has chosen to let his work speak for itself. Without any information provided on the photographs’ subjects or locat...

AMAM Highlights Disabled Artists in A Picture of Health

Julia Peterson, Production Editor

February 5, 2016

Filed under ARTS, Features, Visual Art

Since mid-January, visitors to the Allen Memorial Art Museum who climb the stairs to the Ripin Gallery have been able to peruse the exhibit A Picture of Health: Art and the Mechanisms of Healing. The exhibit includes everything from paintings and sculptures to amulets and an interactive rotorelief, all of which depict or were intended to be involved with health and treatment. Assistant Professor of Renaissance and Baroque Art History Christina Neilson, who co-curated the exhibition with State University of New York Buffalo’s Associate Professor Frances Gage, said that the exhibit is unique because it allows viewers to make crosscultural connections between diverse healing objects. “It’s a different type of ...

Painting Exhibit Depicts Bodies, Human Agency

February 5, 2016

Judit Reigl’s Body of Music exhibit, the first retrospective of her work in the United States, is a visceral exploration of the forces that govern the human body and our autonomy. In an exhibit that opened Tuesday at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, her works embody our collective desire for freedom over our bodies and over the paths we walk in the world. Curated by Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Denise Birkhofer with assistance from Mallory Cohen, OC’15, the exhibit runs through May 29 i...

Feature Photo: Guerrilla Girls

December 11, 2015

Two “broads” of Guerrilla Girls Broadband, a sister organization to the group of women known as Guerrilla Girls, address an audience of largely Studio Art and Art History majors and student activists at a talk in Wilder Hall on Tuesday. Founded in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls’ goal has always been to confront sexism and racism in art, politics and pop culture and to serve as the “conscience of the art world.” The group likens its activism to guerilla warfare. Initially, the members comprised...

In Computer Science Community Art Show, Context Makes All the Difference

Lya Finston

December 11, 2015

Filed under ARTS, Visual Art

The basement dining room of Harkness House was filled with a charged yet casual excitement last Saturday night when it opened its doors for the Computer Science Community Art Show. The Computer Science Majors’ Committee, which serves to represent and bolster Oberlin’s computer science community, organized the event. The venue’s relaxed atmosphere and variety of interpretations of the show’s interdisciplinary theme made for a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking evening. The strength of the event as a whole resided not only in the quality of the works on display, but also in the artists’ presentation and description. By offering background information on the technological aspects of their media, artists...

Acoustics Meet Art in the Allen

Jake Frankenfield

December 4, 2015

Filed under ARTS, Music, Visual Art

Wandering among fine art and listening to Oberlin’s classical guitarists, visitors at the Allen Memorial Art Museum enjoyed a space where visual and sonic art converged Thursday evening. The museum was transformed from gallery to concert hall as two of its more expansive spaces — dedicated to mid 20th-century American Art and European Art from before 1825 — had rows of seats placed in the middle of them. The guitarists were seated in between two sculptures in either room; they were clearly the focal point of the event. The guitarists — double-degree junior Rebecca Klein, Conservatory first-year Collin Sterne, Conservatory senior Stephen Fazio, double-degree sophomore Mohit Dubey, Conservatory sophomore Brian...