The Wake

The imagination is a playful entity that likes to frolic across the canvas, run past the camera lens, and tip-toe through clay. But it also likes to explore and mix media at its will so as to blur the lines between the myriad forms of traditional art. This is the case in “Interplay,” an excessively creative and modern-mixed media show, now showing at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery. The show highlights University of Minnesota alumni and their imaginations, which run amok through conventional mediums, resulting in something truly playful.

The play between mediums and the imagination begins with the media itself. As one enters the gallery, three newspaper vending machines skirt the wall. Upon closer look, one finds Ruthann Godollei’s “Newsbox Project,” which depicts scathing socially conscious headlines such as “Chaos, ruined lives created in a heartbeat.” Godollei’s fake newspapers question the United States’ role in world affairs while being poignant and touching.

Likewise, Matthew Bryant asks his viewers questions. His gelatin silver prints that are mounted on cardboard feature Bryant holding up cardboard signs and panhandling questions such as, “When is Enough, Enough?” and “Are you Asking Enough Questions?” Additionally, Bryant has notes and observations that create a dialogue with the viewer.

A dialogue of a different sort is found in Gregory Scranton’s digital video entitled “Gesture Lessons.” The dialogue here is not communicated with words, but with gestures produced by Light Bright type figures, which perform human interactions that depict handshakes, embraces and kisses. These impersonal dot-characters perform in a sterile white world of computer-like animation. Suzanne Kosmalski also uses video, but in more than one way. Her distorted film of vintage boxing matches along side her still images of old Hollywood films morph and mutilate nostalgia thus creating a relationship between the past and the present.

Video also makes its way into Scott Stulen’s work through the humorously entitled piece “Another failed Attempt at Being Cool.” The seemingly home video shows a toy cowboy on horseback being maneuvered by an omnipotent hand with comic commentary in the background. Stulen also shows humor in his use of a Spirograph so as to create a colorful wall instillation of flowers.

Another installation piece that is humorous, as well as slightly creepy, belongs to Andrew Messerschmidt. “Weed Seeds” features a glowing lawn gnome with an apron that says “weed.” The gnome sits before a painted rag rug that has a picture of Santa and his frisky female elves on vacation. Besides gnomes, “Interplay” offers other strange and deceptively arbitrary objects for contemporary commentary on buttons.

With that said, the idea of bringing together seemingly polar opposite ideas, materials, and concepts make for a refreshingly original and creative “Interplay” of mixed media that dallies in the imagination of university alumni. If you’d like to experience this playground of modern art, “Interplay” will be on display until Nov. 11 at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in the Regis Center for Art.