State of the Art New York exhibition Urbis

I was able to get invites to the opening night of 'State of the Art New York' at the Urbis. I went with three of my friends not knowing what to expect. We were met with sounds of new york with heavy hip hop beat playing through a live DJ which was interesting. It created an atmosphere for the exhibition. The hip hop sounds continued as we walked around looking at the huge variety of work. There were 16 artists displaying there work. From towering installations to hand crafted pencil drawings and new media to photographic work. It was a menu of opinions which I loved, representing the diversity of 'The Big Apple'. 

The images here are three pieces which really caught my eye. 

The first is by Michael Schall called 'Smoke Factory Malfunction 2007' (graphite on paper). It gave me the impression of a world of industrial power. The piece is so well crafted, with such a flawless hand drawn skill. It was extremely impressive to see the piece up close to see the lines and detail.

The second is by Shelter Serra called 'SPLIT TIME' (H2) 2007 made of foam. It was a real eye-catcher as it is of a fairly large scale of a recognisable American car. We wondered about how it was created coming to the conclusion it was far too precise in scale to be created by hand. It is interesting simply to see a recognised object in this environment. Also the fact that it was made from a soft absorbing material such as foam in contrast to the hard steel of the actual H2 we are used to seeing in images of war and rap videos.

The third is by Gandalf Gaven. This light installation is similar to the one created for the Urbis space. The pink neon tube lighting was incredibly beautiful to see. This piece sparked a conversation about design versus art. How design is more than art, it is art with a purpose or function. The four of us are all design students with years of studying the skills of design so the debate was fairly one sided but the point that as a designer we do constantly try to find the beautiful in the boring. For an artist the finding of beauty is made much easier. I found it interesting that we began these conversations after minutes of being around pure Art and not around are lovely world of design.