DenveRhetor Analysis: Art Gallery Thoughts
-Project 1-
On the first Friday of every month, the Art District on Santa Fe in downtown Denver holds an event called “First Friday Art Walk” where viewers have the opportunity to experience pieces of art from all over the world. The six blocks that make up Denver’s art district are home to more than thirty galleries, each displaying a variety of pieces. They’re all types of art from modern and contemporary to tribal and traditional. Each gallery has its own persona and style of artwork that makes it unique. There was one gallery in particular that embodied a number of interesting aspects and is therefore subject for a rhetorical analysis. The gallery allows unique individuals to connect as a group through the shared experience of interpreting art.
In order to properly analyze this gallery, it is important to understand the uniqueness of it. Allow your imagination to visit the gallery in an effort to gain a sense of familiarity with the layout. Upon entering the gallery it becomes very clear that you will be exposed to many different types of art. You are greeted by a wall that houses two large square canvases about three feet by three feet, and are hung side by side. They each have a very large abstract face drawn in a single bright color that is larger than the canvas can support and therefore drifts off of the surface. On the other side of the wall there is a series of four photographs that could be described at “creative lifestyle” portraits. They show four different people adorned with oversized glasses, shirts painted on them instead of wearing clothing, bright and exotic outfits flowing on a dancer, and even a close-up of a scruffy college student enjoying his Saturday night. All of these lifestyle shots are the exact same size and are hung next to each other on one wall. Directly across from these photographs are hanging sheets of chicken wire with bright yarn, string, and cloth woven into them to create a design. Behind the chicken wire are oversized sheets of watercolor paper with washes of color covering them. The paper is warped from the watercolor and is not flesh with the chicken wire, but instead is several inches behind it, mounted to the wall. In another open room the walls are covered in various squares and rectangles of plywood that have bold, organic and natural colors used as a background and bright, swirling continuous lines painted over the top. There is also a huge, hot pink and very conspicuously shaped paper Mache tower that is in the middle of the room. This tower connects the ceiling to the ground and had lime green vines wrapping around it. Next to the tower, twenty or so scientific sketches of flowers all hung in rows next to each other. They are all exactly the same size and are similarly sketched.
The exigence of the art gallery is the social purpose that it serves. It brings together different groups of people to interact and creates an important relationship. This relationship is significant because it encompasses a multitude of social classes, political views, financial backgrounds, and lifestyles. This particular gallery is also important because it is providing a place for this large array of people to come together, and is not primarily concerned with business and making a profit. They have created a niche for themselves in this respect and provided a place for creative energy to flow freely.
The audience for the gallery is comprised of a lot of different personalities. The initial introduction to the audience is young, liberal college students hanging on their friends, contrasted by the more sophisticated “business crowd” sipping wine and socializing. Of course there is a larger variety of people incorporated in the audience, the above example was simply provided to show the vast differences. Though this is an accurate description of the physical audience present at the gallery opening, the intended audience is even more interesting. The intended audience is individuals looking to be inspired. Regardless of if the people are young, old, wealthy, poor, educated, or uneducated, the intended audience is people who want to challenge their mind and allow themselves to think creatively. It is essentially anyone willing to allow themselves to interpret the art in their own way.
In the most literal sense, the purpose of this gallery is to provide the people of Denver with the opportunity to enjoy contemporary art. However, it seems to go even deeper than that. The noticeably intentional selection of art begs the interpretation and thought of its viewers. The wide array of styles, as described earlier, provides an opportunity for the individuals to connect with a number of pieces. It also creates an opportunity for a variety of people to come together in one space and interact with both each other and the art. This gallery creates a community that otherwise would not exist due to the fact that the intended audience plays a large role in the essence as well as the success of the gallery.
I wanted to create a piece of art that would accurately represent my argument. My argument was that the purpose of the gallery is to create a community that would not exist without the interaction of the intended audience. To accomplish this, I created a multi-media piece of art that incorporated different styles from the gallery itself. Some of the materials that I used included a piece of a picture, paper, paint, stickers, ink, jewels, and wood. My goal was to have all of the different medias compliment each other while still standing out, just as the pieces in the gallery did. I also wanted the collection of materials to represent the variations in the audience. For example, the small jewels represent the classy, more sophisticated crowd, while the orange wooden numbers represented the young, athletic college students. The piece was created to show the cohesive community that was formed as a result of the different styles of the art in the gallery.
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