Politics mostly absent from “dizzying” State Fair arts exhibition

Visiting the Fine Arts exhibition at the Minnesota State Fair can be at turns energizing and dizzying The giant gallery displays works across eight categories from sculptures to textiles By design there s no real cohesive order or thematic through-line In contrast to the political themes and slogans on display in the crop art exhibition the Fine Arts show generally is not particularly edgy favoring idyllic landscapes nature imagery poetic silos serene ceramic works and a dose of whimsy Still it s a bit surprising that this year of all years the art didn t have more of a focus on events taking place in our world from wars abroad to mass deportations at home attacks on universities and the news media the use of federal troops against American citizens and more Several pieces on display offer exceptions to the largely apolitical exhibition DM Mak s blue acrylic painting Voices depicts protesters holding signs with phrases like Resist and Rise Up And a number of works touch on politics through a Native lens The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement is represented in multiple pieces like Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe artist Anita M Lovelace s powerful jingle dress titled Minnesota MMIR Healing Dress with the names of missing and murdered Indigenous women sewn into it Related Celebrating years of a North Minneapolis hub for the arts and really great sneakers Rebecca Smith a White Earth Anishinaabe descendant also celebrated the jingle dress in a photograph of her niece Giada Strom Another artist iah q a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe reflected on the power of ancestral knowledge and lineage in her beautifully sewn beadwork piece The Past Holds Me Certain non-Native photojournalists also highlight Native American history and issues J Arthur Anderson s Warrior Spirit Honoring Wounded Knee depicts a woman in a wheelchair in the bed of a pickup truck that flies an American Indian Movement flag facing the camera and holding an automatic rifle defiantly Chuck Avery s photograph Fort Snelling Internment Camp shows a fiber optic cable sign altered by a protester to speak to the Dakota women and children buried at the site Avery s print includes a postscript listing the number of Dakota women children and elders marched to Fort Snelling and later in smaller numbers because multiple died removed to South Dakota In particular cases the portrayal of Native subjects by non-Native artists feels off Michael Borg s black-and-white photograph of a Native woman in regalia features the queasy title Indigenous Princess seemingly unaware of the pejorative connotations of the phrase Visitors to the Minnesota State Fair view works displayed in the Fine Arts Building on Saturday Aug in Falcon Heights Minn Credit Ellen Schmidt MinnPost CatchLight Local Overview for America Fair art at the Fair While politically tinged work is something of an outlier in this year s exhibition the State Fair itself proves a popular topic Patricia Olson s oil painting Looking at Art Minnesota State Fair Exhibition is perhaps the the bulk meta of them all depicting three figures gazing at a hanging piece of art in the same gallery where the work itself hangs Mike Branch s haunting portrait of a judge at a horse event is one of my favorites On his blog Branch writes that the man is a familiar face at the fairgrounds Lee Rose Warner Coliseum where he often wears his signature western-style suit and cowboy hat Branch s photograph captures the official with a stern but inquisitive look Several other portraits stand out Russ White s despondent figure in This Is Fine and Leslie Barlow s double portrait Up and away and finding Alice featuring two people expressing satisfaction amid a backdrop of hot-air balloons Mat Ollig s Socialite portraying a galactic hipster is a lot of fun and Eric Ouren s whimsical fiber sculpture Man Seated on Stump has a personality all its own I had mixed emotions viewing Christopher Selleck s photograph of a bodybuilder Caleb I felt drawn to the beauty of the human form but uneasy thinking about what it takes to reach that level of buff Works celebrating repetition and natural patterns caught my eye I was mesmerized by Latticed Light Katie Clymer s painting of a row of trees standing stoically their shadows stretching along the snow Looking at Mark Swenson s Fractured an oil piece on a masonite panel I could almost hear the sound of crackling ice I also loved the rich repeating texture of Nina Hale s digital print Monarch Butterflies Not one but two pieces from Areca Roe and Melissa Borman use a lenticular D technique to create works that jump out at the viewer Other notable works include seangarrison s abstract painting She Broke My Heart So I Decided to Paint Jodi Reeb s painted aluminum wall sculpture Chalcedony and Sangeeta Gupta s impressively detailed Radha Krishna The Divine Love As for Steve Ozone s Bumblebee a dye sublimation print on aluminum I discovered myself wanting somehow to climb into the work There s a lot more too In truth I felt a bit discombobulated in the gallery with so much going on all at once It s a show possibly best digested over the lesson of more than one day to take it all in And while the exhibition doesn t dwell heavily on contemporary crises it offers an engaging survey of Minnesotans creativity The Minnesota State Fair s Fine Arts Exhibition is open until the fair closes on September You can also peruse the works here The post Politics mostly absent from dizzying State Fair arts exhibition appeared first on MinnPost