What: "Four Easy Pieces"
When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, through July 30.
Where: UNLV's Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery
Admission: Free, 895-3893
The printers were perplexed.
Why would anyone request large digital prints from night photographs of the four corners at Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway for an art show?
If there was some clever composition or artistic trickery to the photos, then maybe, maybe, it might make sense.
But these were straight forward: a Long John Silver's after hours, Walgreens and Chevron and Sinclair gas stations with their glowing signs towering above clusters of smog check and window tinting deals.
Examining the photos at the Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, David Sanchez Burr refers to that intersection and says : "That's pretty much it. This is what we're given to look at. And we accept it. So I thought I'd take a picture of it and hang it on the wall."
Touche.
"Is this what we want?" he says rhetorically. "Is this really what we're looking for? If not, what do we do about it?"
This is the gist of what unfolds in "Four Easy Pieces," an exhibit of urban issues on display through July 30 at the UNLV gallery. The photographs are in the gallery's upstairs annex. The real heft of the exhibit is in the four videos projected on the main floor gallery walls.
Shot in real time, we see an inviting back yard pool with balls floating around, lazily bumping into its edges, slowly spinning, and a hammock in the shaded background. On another wall a regal great blue heron stands almost motionless on a cliff at Lake Mead. Remnants of food hang from his beak. They blow in the wind, as do the feathers of this slightly damaged, wise old animal. A video of trees and plants, shot at night in the gold-orange light from street lamps, portray nature sequestered to man-made planters in the middle of parking lots and next to sidewalks.
Then there is the 54-minute "Shelter," which shows the melting of the word "shelter" made of ice and set in a parking lot. Left to the mercy of the sun, the letters shrink and collapse into the shallow puddle below them.
To walk into this exhibit is to slow down, be aware of the pace at which we live, contemplate our surroundings and question our use of resources. Artists Burr and Jens Luestraeten clearly want to invite thought and discussion with this exhibit.
It s effectiveness, however, lies in the fact that they don't clobber us with their message. Instead they allow it to seep into our consciousness while catching us slightly adrift in a meditative state, lulled by the humming fans in the projectors.
The pace at which we watch ice melt, a giant bird rest on a cliff, pool water ripple and tree limbs lightly bounce under artificial light, evokes a visceral response. It has us leaving behind the fast-paced, corporate and commercialized television-obsessed society, or as Burr describes it, "our propensity for hype, fast motion."
Luestraeten tree videos reflect the relationship between nature and urbanism and offer a glimpse of contemplative places often ignored in daily life.
Burr describes the pool video, titled "Problemlessness," as the American dream, but "conspicuously full of problems."
Born in Spain, Burr is an master of fine arts candidate at UNLV, lured here by the new school of Entertainment Engineering and Design. Luestraeten, who is visiting from Germany on a postgraduate grant, became interested in researching Las Vegas from the writings of urban theorist Mike Davis.
archive