The Santa Fe Art District of Denver hosts a monthly tradition of “First Friday Art Walks”- a culture-rich experience free to the public. The Art Walk consists of open galleries and exhibitions with an eclectic range of visual art, performance art, and live music. As I journeyed down Santa Fe, I encountered numerous kinds of art, formulating together as a colossal collection as if I were in an actual museum. Wandering down the Art Walk, one is able to chance upon landscaped oil paintings, mosaic art, wire sculptures, paste-paper designs, graffiti, limitless photography, and an unbounded array of colors to trumpet the mind.
It is at these assorted collections where one is so inclined to ask themselves – what is art? In a glimpse of the world where there are traditional type paintings compare with modern art; people and things along with simple lines and shadows; the purely objective versus the symbolic. It is here where one can understand the paradigm that art, truly is, based off each person’s own interpretation. Although every piece was established on a set function to portray to the audience, every piece can also maintain additional functions of understanding. As I paced through the night, I noticed a pattern among some of the exhibitions – a pattern that initially, was fairly alarming. Several artists had utilized their skills and techniques to create art that may not be seen as art to the ordinary. Pieces were created and revealed that did not follow the norms of aestheticism. Instead, what many of these artists were putting out were pieces that could almost be thought of as disgusting and repelling, or dark and threatening. I had to wonder, what was the purpose of these disturbing pieces that many are inclined to shy away from?
A gallery by Greg Friedler focused on photography of the not-so-pleasant. The most notable photographs in this gallery included: a series of the insides of gutted fish, perfect arrangements of rotten fruit, transvestites, an inter-racial couple, dead flowers sitting neatly in a vase, a sick child, and a great amount of nakedness. Through Friedler’s categorizing theme of photography, he is attempting to explicate several ideas and push the audience to conflict inherent thoughts with new ones. It is through our society’s values and norms that have impelled people to group certain images, ideas, and realities with either a negative or positive connotation. I believe Friedler may be expressing his view of our modern-day society as one that lacks compassion, open-mindedness, insight, and understanding. The larger majority of our American culture stresses on values that deter away from everything Friedler’s photography represents – that which is founded on beauty, freedom, religion-based norms, and liveliness. These all help form the “American Dream” and what qualifies as achieving success nowadays. But with Friedler’s photography, he highlights the opposing elements of what society generally values. Examples include things that are not considered “beauty”, such as gutted fish and rotten fruit. He shows those who cannot obtain true freedom because of the judgment they receive from the rest of society, including transvestites and inter-racial couples. Friedler shows death through the insides of the fish, the rotten fruit, the sick child, and the dead flowers. Furthermore, he opposes religious-norms and what is considered “appropriate” with numerous photos exhibiting people fully naked.
There is an obvious complexity of reasons why Friedler stresses on these opposing elements to what people are accustomed to. The basis of his argument seems to be an idea he is focusing on – that our society is incredibly sheltered in a non-tolerant, non-rationalizing fixation of ideas and norms, and that we are not compassionate in the understandings of varying cultural values. Also, that most people in our society are too selfish in their concerns, that they group together all that is negative; therefore grouping together dead flowers and rotten fruit with a sick child, because we don’t have the empathy or time to care about the sick child. Taking time to feel empathy for the sick child would be a burden to us in our busy lives, and would bring us down because most people would rather focus on things that make us happy rather than focusing on the ugly of reality. So instead of taking time to maintain compassion and seeking truth, we automatically consider it ugly and negative, and categorize it with other things that are ugly and negative to us, such as the things that are dead. The same can be demonstrated by the photography of the transvestites and inter-racial couples. We are so wrapped up in our individual lives and packed schedules, we don’t feel we can give the time of day to question, ponder, and perhaps understand people with opposing values to us. Friedler’s photography of other peoples stories highlight the major issue of our self-centered values. This seems to be his reasoning for creating the photography exhibition that he created.
His photography offers a chance for people to view the things they don’t normally see or want to look at. It becomes a choice – whether or not we decide to indulge in the unknown world of strangeness, ugliness, and truth. He is giving people a chance to rub their minds and strengthen or re-evaluate their values. Only when we can look and think about the things we don’t want to look at or think about, can we truly understand our values and beliefs. Depending on what each individual does with this given opportunity, I believe Friedler is offering people a chance to better themselves by testing their character with these photographs. If someone can take the time to try to understand an opposing cultural value than what they are accustomed to, through these photos, then the goal of these photos has already been partly reached as people expand their minds for true critical analysis. These photos not only give people the chance to open up their minds, but to question their own values. Most people grow up with values that were instilled in them during early years in the household, and they don’t even understand the basis of their values. They call these their “values” because of their family or group/religious affiliation, not knowing the fundamental reasoning of these values. When Friedler exposes people to things/people they don’t want to see or think about, it brings another opportunity to question our own beliefs. We get a chance to ask ourselves why we are so repulsed by what we see; is it truly repulsive? If so, then why, when it isn’t harming anyone? If we don’t understand the fundamental reasoning behind our values and beliefs, then our values and beliefs are worthless. Friedler’s photography offers people a chance to truly grasp and restructure their core values.
Another fascinating artist by the name of John Bonath showcased sculptures and digital pieces that may be thought of as unsettling. Some of his pieces include a woman being engulfed by cockroaches, a morphed photo of a man who looks diseased and clouded in smoke, and a woman emerging from a tight hold of what seems like people trapped in hell. In similarity to Friedler’s exhibition, Bonath presents things that are unsettling to us. Bonath’s digital pieces can also help reinforce a person’s character if they so choose to when they come across these pieces. In addition to how the exigence and aims of Friedler’s pieces, I think Bonath’s pieces also help people to realize the truth of why we categorize some things as good, and others a bad. Perhaps it is “bad” only because we don’t see it often enough and it frightens us to come across things that aren’t part of our usual daily lives. But then, is it truly bad? Or is it only considered “bad” because we as human-beings are becoming less and less inclined to adapt to change? We cannot accept the unusual and that which does not fit the norm because it inconveniences our lives. In an era where convenience is a new cultural value of America, we don’t have time to embrace the strange; it would be much easier to consider it bad and set it aside. But when we do that, the “bad” isn’t truly bad, and ultimately we are hurting people by purposely steering away from understanding them. When we don’t allow our minds to expand and we only fill our lives with the things we are comfortable with, tension is created between opposing ideas and values. Much of that tension is unnecessary, since most opposing groups would not harm each other if they could just have a better understanding of other values and be content they have their own. I think both Fridler and Bonath stress on this idea with their exhibitions.
The ideas and opportunities they are pushing out to society also helps people better appreciate that which we already consider beautiful, free, and life-filled. When people see too much beauty, beauty loses its value. The same goes for freedom when all a person knows their entire life is freedom in every choice they make. Many of us take for granted the energy and liveliness we have every day in our lives because we are accustomed to it. We have an imperative need for opposing elements to reinforce the things we appreciate. When we become too accustomed to the things that are good, they lose value, leading to a further loss in value of all that we do already appreciate and bask our lives in.
Art is art because of the freedom it allows; and with freedom comes inventiveness and frankness. People generally have a set idea already of what is good and what is bad, but ultimately, who is to determine what is considered good and bad? What makes the bad, as we interpret them, truly bad? There is no fundamental reason why the things we think of as scary are really scary, or the things that people find ugly are actually ugly. Qualities and misunderstandings have been placed upon certain things, and or ideas that give them a negative interpretation, and therefore – people tend to agree with those negative interpretations. We think the masked killers in these horror movies are scary because that is what we are influenced to think. We turn away from it because it unsettles us to see something so scary or unpleasant. Most people would turn away from an openly naked body because we are taught that nakedness in public is inappropriate, and to engage in that nakedness in front of others, is inappropriate as well.
By deliberately confronting what we do not want to see or to think about, we learn to tolerate — and eventually even to appreciate — that which is different. By broadening our perspectives, we learn to adapt to and even to embrace change, in the world and in ourselves. We must test our core values, and we must be willing to revise them, if they are to remain strong. Only by facing that which we perceive as negative can we truly discover what is positive in our beliefs.
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