Middletown Art Center currently has on view an exhibition titled, “Sum of Its Parts — Assemblage and Collage”. It is a beautifully curated exhibition of the many ways in which found objects and graphic clippings can be combined to make not only intriguing and abstracted images but also statements about the world around us.
The roots of assemblage and collage can be traced back only a hundred years, a small blip in European art history. Some of the first examples of assemblage can be attributed to Marcel Duchamp with his World War I-era ready mades. These inspired Joseph Cornell’s classic shadow boxes, and later Robert Rauschenberg’s and Jasper Johns’ assemblage and combine works. Collage was first pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso around 1910, at the height of their Cubist experiment.
Even a century after their advent, mixed media works continue to be a source of intrigue for contemporary audiences, largely due to their continual evolution and ready adaptation to changing cultural climates. Few other 20th century artistic movements have survived more than a decade or two, yet contemporary assemblage and collage works remain fresh and relevant.
These bits and pieces of human discards are capable of telling artists’ and viewers’ stories, those both raw and humorous, inane and contradictory.
Featuring the work of ten regional artists, Sum of Its Parts is a showcase of the many guises Assemblage and Collage can take on. Red Army Solar Powered Submarine by Terry Church is a favorite of gallery visitors, garnering much attention and discussion. A miniature rusty submarine sits atop a red metal barrel, held up by metal duck legs. Red arms extend from inside the sub, which is decorated with politically charged red stars and an iron ball and chain. Turning the power knob causes a boat propeller atop the sub to rotate which initiates rowing motion of the red arms. The piece is darkly humorous, spatially commanding and visually arresting.
Postonwood Emerging by Naoto Sekiguchi features that most traditional of European media: oil on canvas. Yet no one could accuse Sekiguchi of an academic approach, not when his oil painting of a partially nude female is framed by wood scraps gathered from the eponymous Japanese internment camp in Poston, Arizona, bits of stained glass and copper wire. The ‘emerging’ figure is cropped claustrophobically, forcing the viewer into an intimate confrontation; the kind rarely afforded to the internment camps of WWII. Simultaneously, the viewer is held at bay by the sharp, splintered wood bars, which surround the figure, suggesting an experiential distance between the free viewer and the caged figure.
Assemblage and collage are the intersection between fierce originality and the seemingly contradictory appropriation of objects and graphic designs created by others. Middletown Art Center’s current exhibition highlights these contradictions, drawing on popular culture, historical ideologies and the human capacity for puzzles. Catch the show before it closes Sunday Aug. 9.
Middletown Art Center is located at the junction of highways 29 and 175 in Middletown, at 21456 State Highway 175, and is open Thursday from noon to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday from noon to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m.
To learn more about classes and events, to become a member or support MAC with a donation, please visit www.middletownartcenter.org or call 809-8118. The next exhibition opening is Aug. 15 from 6 to 8 p.m.
