I would love to witness a glorious collision between the genius of modern installation artists and the rich community and audience of the local church. We can all remember when sometime around Sophomore year of high school we were exposed to about a million odd paintings of Jesus. He looked like a mature 30 year old that had been shrunk in bath water and came out all gangly, pruned and distorted. And who can forget Bernini’s orgasmic nuns? All of that is to say that even if in another century, we’ve seen painting and sculpture in the church. And now with awesome film communities like Hillsong’s Exchange Festival, we’re watching the emergence of film and video art in the church. There’s also a large presence of graphic designers in Christian communities (though their work seems mostly aimed at marketing).
The one thing I have not witnessed in all its glory is installation art in the world of the church.
I love the work of artists like Tara Donovan and Cornelia Parker. Both of these women take simple materials, sometimes numbering in the thousands, and they beautifully arrange them to create fresh landscapes. Parker has worked with ammunition to blow things up and then reassemble it in the gallery. I saw Donovan’s exhibit at MCASD in 2009 and it was breathtaking. Thousands of Styrofoam cups created a dreamlike ceiling. Both artists craft landscapes from raw materials that become a blank canvas for light to pass through and people to walk through.
I go crazy over well done installation art because so often the experience is immersive. My senses are activated and I begin to think about the world in a new way. Now imagine if the building called the church could be a transformative gallery for installation art. The art could address what’s being taught in service, but still function as art that’d open-ended… leaving freedom for the people to explore the meaning for themselves.
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| By Benjamin James |
There are a few Christian stage designers whose work I really admire. They do an incredible job at designing dynamic, media-centric stage environments. The work they do encourages me that the church is increasingly more open to visual creativity. I just pray that it moves from the stage to the seats, then to the hallways, parking lots and hearts of churchgoers.
Yes, Cornelia Parker's work is one of my favorites. Looking back at my experiences simply walking around in Gothic Cathedrals in Europe makes me sure that the space of a church can certainly inspire creativity in the visual arts.
ReplyDeleteHave you heard of James Turrell?
He designed this beautiful Quaker Meeting house - a sort of window of light http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?slide=585&artindex=152
I have heard of James Turrell =) Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteI love your creativity. It is a gift from God that blesses others :)
ReplyDeleteThe idea of putting installation art in a church is incredible! I've never thought of religious spaces as galleries, though you're right when you say that there has been art there all along! I think perhaps (excuse me if you have addressed this in another post), there is something about "religious art" that is kind of untouchable. It seems very taboo to do things in non-standard ways. And I find that this type of reverence/fear of making different types of art for a religious context is reflective of an interesting paradox that I have been thinking about in thinking of religious spaces: there is this simultaneous goal for people to think for themselves, yet to conform to this standardized version of a religion, because people want to empower others to think for themselves, but I feel that there is a fear about taking it too far, to which point there is no coherance to the religion anymore...
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