Capitol Hill Arts Walk: July '09

Last night's Art Walk kept Da Hill buzzing, and so did the opening of Bluebird Ice Cream and Tea for that matter. One of the things we love to see here at DHP are residents really taking an interest in their city, and the great work that comes out of it. We decided that Arts Walk would be a great first post for the site, so here goes.

We stopped by Toys in Babeland to check out featured artist Crystal Barbre, and DHP contributor Elizabeth Thompson had this to say.

Crystal Barbre's tantalizing yet unsettling oil paintings work to entice and repel the viewer. Barbre's sphinx-like juxtaposition of graphically- posed female figures with the head of an animal seeks to tie the world of sex and sexuality to it's animalistic roots.

The paintings, when taken as a whole,reveal the power of female sexuality . Yes, the women featured in each painting are fully bared to the viewer in a variety of explicit poses. But despite, and maybe because of their clear ties to pornography, each piece inverts the viewer's expectations.

Usually when presented with a nude female, audiences are tacitly given permission to look. Traditionally, it has been assumed that audience members would be predominately male. Stereotypically speaking, the same can be said for the porn industry. The gaze is a socially accepted construct. Yet, with Barbre's pieces, there is the sense that permission has been revoked. Whether the subjects gaze back with solemn deer eyes or the vicious glare of the wolf, the viewer must address their own position. They must question their own act of looking.

Our next stop was Vermillion, where I got a little taste of Troy Gua.

Troy Gua’s “ do you see me?” show at Vermillion is a very personal yet universally appealing critique of individuality or lack there of, in modern society. Gua uses the lens of social networking and common interaction to point out the truth as he sees it. In his own quest to find individuality, Gua shines a light on the ethics of an increasingly non-intimate technological civilization.

“25 Random Things” examines the popular Facebook group “ 25 Things” which asks members to list twenty-five personal things about themselves and send it to twenty-five friends, and thus the cycle continues in a disturbing ‘Pay It Forward’ contraption. In an all too literal “airing off dirty laundry” various acrylic covered underwear bear random, sometimes rather intimate, messages. All of which were gathered from Gua’s own Facebook dalliances.

"do you see me?" turns the camera around to the cast and crew pointing out the accepted, and asks " Is this really o.k?". Should we as a community settle for this false interpersonal relationship we seem to be in, alone? Gua's struggle for individuality is everyone's struggle, except I'm not sure if we know it yet.