This weekend was the weekend for many a gallery opening. On Friday, I went over to the West Loop and took a look at some galleries and the work that was shown. One artist's work was particularly interesting to me and that was the work Caleb Weintraub that was shown in the Peter Miller Gallery. I liked the playful quality of his work and yet I also liked the cynical distortion of his pieces. I went to the Peter Miller Gallery website and found a statement of the artist's intentions:
Caleb explored "issues of neglect, elitism, conceit and cruelty are woven into a potential future for humanity. Powerful children embody the forces that both degrade the surroundings as well as provide hope."
He approaches serious, negative, and evil aspects of human nature and portrays them through children and a child like/youthful quality by using bright colors, glitter, sequins and other materials often associated with/used by children when making arts and crafts. It seems to me that Caleb Weintraub is suggesting that the young/future generations have the power to succumb to this evil side of man's nature or they have the potential to be the bright future.
I actually visited this gallery as well and was definitely enthralled by Weintraub too! I was here in 2008 and saw his exhibition and was absolutely fascinated with his depictions of scenes that are both vaguely familiar and historically significant but with children taking the place of the people we would normally picture.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that Weintraub is an example of what I was pondering in my earlier post and that is how do people with such creativity end up "selling out" (used very loosely with no offense meant) to these galleries.
He had spoken of the paintings as a representation of how children have turned their backs against the world and are taking up their own stance...and that was very interesting to me.