Silence and Time exhibit 8-24-2011

Silence and Time is an exhibit at The Dallas Museum of Art that in inspired by the work of John Cage.  The exhibit displays the works of many artists who stick to the theme of absence, presence, and temporality.  The piece I found most compelling in the exhibit is a spray paint on canvas by Sterling Ruby.  Spray paint is generally used by gangs for street art and gives off a grungy, urban vibe.  Seeing spray paint on canvas still shows a little of that aspect but also gives the piece a refreshing look because it has such a unique look.  The spray paint gave the painting a more three dimensional feeling and look.  Ruby stuck to bright colors for his piece, which gave it a pop and was very appealing to the eye.  He also added uneven lines of dark colors to the top of the painting which seems to balance it out.   Ruby took cans of paint and sprayed each one left to right until they ran out.  His painting portrays the visual of a landscape.  To me, the dark lines of spray paint that are sprayed randomly on top of the red color not only represents a theme of presence, but also displays violence as it is a shade of red.  After looking closely at the painting and basing it off the landscape that was created, I can see faint images of active people and vegetation.  To me this makes perfect sense because the use of spray paint makes me thing of gangs and violence, and that’s exactly what I see when I look at this painting.  Ruby’s painting depicts a perfect mix of absence and presence- absence due to violence and presence due to the activity in the painting.  This tiesin perfectly with Cage’s theme.