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CHAPEL HILL — Jack Pierson’s composition “Beauty” is the first work visitors will see in a new exhibit at the Ackland Art Museum, titled “The Spectacular of Vernacular.” Pierson took plastic, neon tubing, wood and other materials and made letters spelling “Beauty,” each letter with a different shape, resembling fallen letters or found objects.
The Pierson piece hangs in the museum lobby and represents one of 25 works in this show, which examines how contemporary (and some historical) artists have found inspiration from local and regional sources and employed that inspiration in their work.
The Ackland is the final site for this traveling exhibit, which originated at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn. The Ackland “immediately latched onto” the exhibit and wanted to bring it to UNC, said Peter Nesbit, chief curator at the Ackland. The show has a wide variety of media — photography, sculpture, video, even a quilt.
The Ackland, Nisbet said, had complete freedom in placing the pieces in the exhibit, which invites viewers to wander back and forth and draw their own conclusions and comparisons. The show does not have a single thesis, nor does it have a particular sequence, he said. ‘Spectacular’ might help visitors understand how artists still find inspiration in local customs and objects, even in a globalized Internet culture where so much is available to them, Nisbet said.
In her introduction to the catalogue for the exhibit, Darsie Alexander, chief curator of the show, compares these artists to “critical interpreters who expose the unexpected visual pleasures of the everyday — the shapes and patterns of the street, or the flow of movement as people make their way through space.” The artists in the show “are closer in spirit to those who shop at the corner store, hang out at the local coffee shop, and pursue their curiosities and fancies with devil-may-care independence,” Alexander writes.
Marc Swanson’s sculpture “Untitled (Looking Back Buck)” is the next piece viewers will see, if they follow the galleries in a specific order. It is a deer head covered in crystal-covered fabric.
In his artist’s statement, Swanson says he grew up in a small town in New England, where hunting was important, and later moved to San Francisco, where he became part of the city’s music and gay scene. He did not feel completely at home in either, he writes, and his art reflects that conflict between these worlds.
The catalogue cover, and the poster to the Ackland run of the show, is an image of Lari Pittman’s two-panel painting “A Decorated Chronology of Insistence and Resignation #30.” Pittman’s paintings have images of the MasterCard and VISA credit card logos, and slogans such as “Go For It,” in a composition of collage-like images and splashy colors. The paintings “propose an exuberance and an ornamentalization,” Pittman writes in an artist’s statement. But they may also represent the opposite experience, “existentialism or nihilism,” he writes.
This exhibit includes several Walker Evans photographs, including “A Miner’s Home,” which took of the Depression era South for the Farm Security Administration. Artist William E. Jones’ 2009 film “Killed” takes images from Evans and other photographers (Ben Shahn, Marion Post Walcott) whose work was rejected (with a hole punched in the images) by the Farm Security Administration. Jones puts these images on a continuous and rapid loop. The reasons for their rejection are not documented, inviting the viewer to ponder why these images were not deemed worthy for dissemination.
The exhibit has two series of photographs from Lorna Simpson, “1957-2009 Interior #1” and “LA ’57-NY ’09.” Simpson found and purchased some black and white photos taken by an anonymous woman in Los Angeles, who photographed herself in poses similar to models and movie stars. Simpson photographed herself in similar poses and settings. “I got the idea to insert myself into her scene, into her three-month project,” Simpson wrote in an artist’s statement.
“The Spectacular of Vernacular” is the first of several exhibits that will explore how artists approach the regional and everyday in their work. Other exhibits will be “North Carolina Pottery (Jan. 27-March 4), “Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton” (March 9-May 13), “Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper” (March 30 to July 1), and “Emma Lee Pettway Campbell’s ‘Housetop Variation Quilt’” (March 30-July 1).
