Posts

Elizabeth Gerdeman Artist Talk Reflection

I thought it was interesting how much Elizabeth Gerdeman’s work reflected her home depot inspiration. The connection between the urban/suburban experience and the simplistic renditions of the natural world were fascinating. I also grew up in Columbus and I know that any significant landscape is miniscule and hard to come by, so the very untouchable landscapes she creates makes a lot of sense. When you spend so much time in the city it’s difficult to get away from the idea that the natural world is anything more than a brief moment of silence or a lucky vacation. Bringing the landscapes to two dimensional, climate controlled spaces connects people to spaces that are less accessible, but it also sort of demonstrates the wide separation that exists there. It’s also interesting to think about how tailored the daily experience is. I love the paint sample section at home depot and I never really considered it past a general liking, the discussion of how high paid corporate execs are playing me with psychology tricks is somewhat unnerving. I do agree that the emotion in a room can be immediately decided by the color and of course designing experiences that we like is crucial to our happiness; I suppose I just prefer to think I’m creating those experiences for myself not that I’m being played for profit. On the other hand, I like how much Gerdeman incorporated that intentional connection into her work, especially in her installation, Course, where she used paint colors named after a theoretically beautiful place to display the reality of the place’s situation. I liked the sense of drive behind this work and how she sought to encourage viewers to think about the world around them more closely rather than accepting the pretty definitions fed by capitalists. 

One thing I really liked about her work, particularly her site specific work, was the connection and “restoration” of architectural spaces. I am an architecture major and I’m also in Allison Crocetta’s Art 2000 class, this lecture really tied a lot of my interests together. In her class we are learning about the work of Theaster Gates and his path from urban planning to ceramics to community restoration, and I couldn’t help but think of his work when listening to Gerdeman talk about her own method of building restoration. Although Gerdeman works on a much more two dimensional and purely visual level, I really like how different her take is on achieving the same overall goal. Gates did more literal restoration to support the arts, but Gerdeman worked on a more emotional restoration through the process of art and its display. I also liked how she began her journey bringing the landscapes indoors and then flipped her method on its head bringing indoor artworks outside, into ruins. She had this fixed idea of ”exaggerated perceptions of the world around us” when she started and came out displaying the world as it actually exists. This also ties in really well with her paint colors work. I typically don’t see artists with as much continuity in their work, Gerdeman discussed how her projects really inform each other and I like how clear those intersections are.