Review#3: Museum of Art and Design

The new Museum of Art and Design overall may not be worth your time but there are two significant pieces of their collection that should no be missed. Meanwhile the rest of the museum’s five floors are hit and miss with works from emoticons to flattened silverware. The two works, “My Back Pages” by Paul Villinski and “Perpetual Steam” by Steven Deo, are able to make the trip to the museum a memorable one. Both pieces successfully use everyday items to depict their ideas. The everyday items are able to reinforce the concepts because people are able to relate to the items easily and the times reinforce the theme. 

“My Back Pages” by Paul Villinski is a full wall piece, it extends from the floor to the ceiling of the museum which is about 12 feet. The piece starts on the floor with an old record player. The record player is to the right of the overall piece and has the rest of the work flowing out of it. On the record player is a record that is peeling off of itself in the shape of a butterfly. This is used to explain the rest of the piece which is a wide assortment of similarly sized butterflies constructed out of vinyl records. Each butterfly has the monochromatic center of the record along with the artist and album title on it. The artist says that the piece is constructed from the albums that are the soundtrack of his life. This is a sentiment that many people can identify with, we all have special albums that have meant something different to us throughout our lives. Villinski has taken his and meshed them together into an unforgettable work of art.

Steven Deo’s work “Perpetual Steam” uses the same idea of constructing his art out of everyday items. For his work Deo constructs generically shaped humans out of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Deo says that the work represents his cultural identity as “relocated, dislocated, grouped and regrouped, numbered, and scattered” referring to the melting pot that the word has become. I however didn’t take this away from the piece, I had to read in the plaque that the people were suppose to be Indians to understand his vision. It struck me more as a statement about our personalities and our own beings. We take layers and layers of different pieces from different places to construct ourselves into our own image. The only thing that is similar between people are our basic shape. Either way the use of the jigsaw puzzle pieces is able to reinforce both points of views because they are used to symbolize the construction of something with many different and unique pieces. 

Both artist are able to successfully portray their messages in their works and do so in a memorable way. They both have universal messages that are both clear and powerful. For both of the works the artist have left enough ambiguity in them to allow the viewers imagination to wonder and create their own personal connection with the works while still having their intended messages intact. These two works alone justify the time spent in the museum and if you have the time, look around maybe you will enjoy the rest of the museum more than I did.

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