WIGA 2012
How much truth can art bear? This enigmatic quotation from French philosopher Alain Badiou was the springboard for the third annual What Is Good Art? Competition and Exhibition.
Read a profile of the competition and exhibition in the Duke Chronicle here.
The distinguished panel of judges for the 2012 competition included a mix of people new to the project and a number of returning experts:
Christopher Bass, Vice President at Oak Hill Capital Partners, L.P.
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Noah Pickus, Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kimerly Rorschach, Director, Nasher Museum of Art
Raquel Salvatella de Prada, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual and Media Arts
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Charles Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Duke Center for Documentary Studies
With a strong field, the judges chose to award two additional Honorable Mention Prizes in addition to First, Second, and Third Prizes.
Competitions winners were:
First Prize: Pinar Yoldas, Speculative Biologies
Second Prize: Nikita Yogeshwarun, Flaw
Third Prize: Rebecca Kuzemchak, Any Given Day
Honorable Mention: Yumian Deng, Musician Underground
Honorable Mention: Hannah Metaferia, Accademia
During the Opening Gala on April 13th, attendees voted for Gallery Choice prize, producing the the first-ever tie. This year’s Gallery Choice Prize co-winners are:
Carrie Arndt, Gollum
Colin Heasley, Gilt
View the Team Kenan’s curation companion guide to the exhibition here:
The full gallery is online below.
Joshua Izzard, untitled
When considering how much truth art can handle, I thought of this photograph of mine because it tests a viewer’s interactive abilities with a photo, and it illustrates the differing impacts less or more truth can have on the viewer. At first glance, it seems surrealist, a looming, unidentifiable red shape set against a purple-hued night sky. First impressions are usually that of an extraterrestrial motif present in the photo with the violently colored, relatively focused sky in sharp contrast with the throbbing red tower that seems to sway in time with the waving grass it rests upon. Is this alien connotation a “true” interpretation? Of course not, but the photograph profits from the ambiguity of the subject matter.
Take the curious, querying feeling you may be feeling right now at your first encounter with this photograph and remember it. Magicians never reveal their secrets, because most of the appeal of “magic” comes from not understanding how a slight-of-hand could be manipulated to produce such an improbable effect. Similarly, when the magic behind this photo is revealed, the impact of the image is greatly diminished. The mysterious red tower? It is a feed dispenser on my friend’s ranch, sitting in a nondescript field in rural West Texas. The strange blur juxtaposed against a sharp sky? This picture was taken at nighttime without a tripod during a lightning storm, so that the flash of lightning behind the clouds acted as a flash from a camera and stabilized my shaky camera. The newfound knowledge that this picture was made possible by an instant of lightning may give the viewer a different appreciation for the photo, but I believe that overall the picture is less impressive for having slipped back into the realm of natural phenomena that we can apprehend and feel comfortable with.
As a final response to the question, “How much truth can art bear?” I would like to note the illuminating yet disappointing nature of a truthful description of this photo. Dealing strictly with truth and the objective diminishes art because it removes a dimension from the experience: that of what each individual viewer brings to the table in terms of past experiences and impressions. A photographer would see this picture much differently than a rancher, but both people have experience with matters that this image deals with. Setting out a hard and fast reality for art to conform to limits its power of expression, and as such it should be done with caution.