Cooler but still well above normal this week

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

It's hard to know what's what these days.

From Photoshopped images of models to quotes taken out of context, finding something real and true to hold onto can be a full-time pursuit.

At least the Walker Art Center is being honest about its latest exhibition, 

, which presents the viewer with a series of glorious fakes.

Crouching Boy in Mirror, 1999/2002 by Ron Mueck

An old cardboard box turns out to be canvass on wood, treated and manipulated until it finally looks 

like an old cardboard box. An oversized rubber eraser that appears smudged from use is actually made from balsa wood and acrylic paint.

Everywhere you turn, ordinary objects and mundane pictures reveal themselves to be something wholly different from what they appear to be.

The reality-craving pragmatist in me says "that's cool... but what's the point?"

Curator Siri Engberg says for many artists, it's about testing the limits of their ability with the tools of their trade. If they manage to fool the eye of a viewer, they've achieved a level of skill and artistic accomplishment.

But beyond that, Engberg says, the act of making this kind of art in today's modern age is tantamount to a form of protest:

"Nothing good happens after midnight/everything good happens after midnight" by Ruben Nusz

acrylic, oil, tea, walnut ink on wax and resin (with incense and cremation ashes)

Two of the 55 artists in this show are Minnesotans - David Lefkowitz and Ruben Nusz. Nusz created an ashtray, complete with used cigarettes. For him, the process of creating the work became almost a spiritual act, connecting him to a chain-smoking grandfather he never met.

As for David Lefkowitz, he's sprinkled the exhibition with small paintings that look deceptively like electrical outlets and other utilitarian panels. But they aren't. Lefkowitz says he likes how they "feign utility."

For Lefkowitz, like Nusz, realism is all about paradox - both in art, and in our lives.

 opens tomorrow and will be up through May 27. Perhaps after seeing the show, people will start looking at the "real world" with a more skeptical eye.

Arts and Culture

State of the Arts Blog

Marianne Combs

Author

The Walker's latest exhibition presents the viewer with a series of glorious fakes.

Lifelike: Nothing is as it seems at the Walker

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox