Jessica Liu - Experience-Reproduce

Work

The work I chose is done by Jacqueline Humphries and is displayed in Carnegie Museum of Art. It is done in special metallic pigments that glow under ultraviolet light. The work is actually three paintings displayed on three walls in one dark room and there’s a sofa in the middle of the room for viewer to sit on so that they can be surrounded by the paintings. This exhibition of Humphries stands out in the museum firstly because it is displayed in a dark room, contrary to most of other exhibition in the Museum. Besides, the paintings are mysteriously glowing in the dark, which I found to be very compelling. 

Experience and Response

There were only several ultraviolet lights on the ceiling making the room purplish. The three paintings are glowing and when I sat on the sofa in the middle of the room, I felt rounded by the dim lights shed by the paintings. The paintings in front of me is composed of mint-green,which is calming. In close look, it has a very neatly dotted texture. It looks like a wall that has been painted many time and the color started to fade and blend. The painting on the right is dark-purple with a scale texture. The center part of it is bright yellow surrounded by some red. I starred at it for a while and began to see it in 3D, as if several men are dancing around the yellow fire in a black background. The left painting is thickly painted in orange and green/blue. I thought the think pigment on the canvas resembles water waves. I interpreted it as a beach, only that the color of sea and sand is inversed.

Product

I believe Humphries’ works, because of their simple forms and their glowing quality, is meant to make viewers to imagine on their own. Therefore in my product, I combined what I saw and what they triggered me to think about. First I created a dark purple background using the photos I took and then I added a dotted texture, just like Humphries did to all his works. Then I search on Google for “men dancing around fire ”and “beach” and chose one of each that I thought best fit. After I added the pictures, I reversed the color of the beach picture and made some changes to make it reflect my experience. 

Reflection

I find this project really interesting but very hard for me to complete. Although I spent a lot of time exploring photoshop this week, I still was not able to create the effect I expect in one hour. When I observed the paintings I obviously felt a lot, but it is hard to describe in words and even harder to display it in digital form.

It is hard to say whether I capture my experience accurately or not. Because I feel like my experience is blurry and constant-changing. I also wonder how others will respond to Humphries’ work. Is the associations I thought of unique, or do everyone make the same associations?

If I had done this project again, I would not have used liquefy as tense as I did in my project because it looks a bit messy.