The big idea
By Nick Rabinowitsh
April 19, 2003 9:00 p.m.
Some people see a room as purely functional. Others see it as a
blank canvas. And no, this isn’t about interior designers,
but a few students in the UCLA art department.
From April 29 through May 3, Master of Fine Arts students in
UCLA’s art department will put on a show often using entire
walls or rooms as one unified piece of artwork. The show, titled
“What Do You See At Night?”, will consist of pieces
that the students have selected as part of their graduate
theses.
The show will consist of types of art including sculpture,
drawing, photography, sound/installation, print/installation,
video/installation and painting.
Karl Haendel, an M.F.A. student graduating this spring,
describes the installation exhibits as key features to the
show.
“Installation is a type of art where the room itself is
treated as part of the artwork,” Haendel said.
“It’s artwork that can only be realized once they build
it specifically for the space at the time of the exhibit, something
that will have to be torn down to get out the door.”
While Haendel’s own piece isn’t an installation, he
has taken a larger-than-life approach. Using pencil to scrawl on a
10-by-16-foot piece of paper, “Very Big Scribble”
brings epic proportions to notepad doodling.
Sara Jordeno, a grad student in the interdisciplinary studio
focus of the art department, will display documentaries that she
made on 16mm film in her video installation “Location
Interviews.” She will use the entire room, though, to show
it. Jordeno plans to turn the room into a replica of the background
of the video she will screen in it, making the room into a kind of
a set for its own film.
“It’s a very intimate space that has the same
structure as the background of the film, so that the viewer gets
the impression that he’s actually participating in it,”
said Jordeno.
The show can broadly be categorized as conceptual art, which
Haendel defines as a movement from the late 1960s through the early
1970s that valued the idea over the object. In other words, the
artwork alludes to a greater idea than the physical piece created
by the artist.
The exhibition is curated by artists John Baldessari (whom
Haendel credits as the Godfather of conceptual art) and Roger
Herman, professors of art at UCLA.
