Silence and Time
The Dallas Museum of Art is currently showing an exhibition entitled “Silence and Time.” The pieces in the show are inspired by John Cage’s famous 1952 composition 4’33” where not one note is played throughout the entire composition. The works of art in the gallery go along with this idea of absence and simplicity. Out of everything on display, Sterling Ruby’s “SP 31” really caught my attention. Ruby created this piece by spraying semi-even rows of different colors of spray paint until the cans were empty. It appears that he then used different techniques to splatter paint mainly primary and secondary colors on top of the layers of spray paint. This all blends together to create somewhat of chaos that Rudy calls a “landscape.”
Despite the fact that Rudy used loud, contrasting colors on a very large canvas, “SP 31” still looks very simple and mysterious. When you look at it, it almost does not make sense. It is very similar to Cage’s 4’33 in this way. In both instances the audience walking away from these works of art are left baffled, trying to comprehend what just happened. But at the same time “SP 31” it is utterly silent with no clear or immediate theme. As you can see from this close up I took shortly before the security guard made me put away my phone, Rudy was not trying to make a piece of art by painting a certain image in my mind. I think that Rudy wanted to make a piece of art based on not his vision; but rather trying to create art based on the imaginations of what the people viewing it saw.
Cage withholds his musical mark allowing the sounds of a shifty audience to fill his space. His absence highlights their presence and the definition of music is expanded.
ReplyDeleteRuby's piece is full of visual noise yet absent of explicit meaning. His process --using up one spray can at a time--documents the time it took him to create the work.