ROUSE

Knowing a lot of the professors in the show, I tend to automatically think more positive things. Having Ariel Baron-Robbins for two semesters has made me understand a bit of her work and her intentions. She worked a lot with psychogeography to capture the feeling of a specific space. Her work was very abstract and constantly covered and layered over or added onto the page. I heard many complaints about the great boxed sculpture with all of the letters covered and the grass panorama inside. I definitely enjoyed the interaction with the work, that the artist encouraged you to step inside. The works in the other room were a bit more extreme and shocking. I felt like the artist who did the great elephant statue was going for a more comical take on the spectacle. The statue was very well rendered and proportionally correct. While it was very graphic, I felt it was less uncomfortable to look at as the work on the wall about the dragqueen. The artist invited you to her world and set up different installations or images to bring you into this reality. My friend greatly dislike the virtual world set up in the back corner. I do not know much about this work, and was more fascinated by the concept of interacting with an online world than noticing formal aspects that I was already unfamiliar with. He felt that the artist should have stuck with what he was already familiar with instead of doing "a half ass job" on this idea. I disagree with this, while I am still unfamiliar with digital works I think the artist successfully rendered and set up their alternate world for us to engage in.