Rats Are Really Sweet And Cuddly

MAREPE!!!

I love looking at pictures and image of  her work. So when I had an opportunity to visit the Kern gallery, and see her work live in person, I was very very excited.

...when I arrived my heart sank. What she had created was a series of sculptures using bicycles, household objects, and random things. While her technique and craft were exceptional, the exhibit itself was flawed in several fundamental ways. The first:

• Layout: A person can have the most unique and expressive show in the world, but if the exhibit is not properly placed, it takes away from the experience. 

Marepe's exhibit appeared to be randomly placed throughout the gallery. Without perspective, the ideas got lost. It was very hard to move from sculpture to sculpture and  have a jarring visual experience. Like goes with like, from large to small, small to large, or interchanging levels.

• Functionality: The biggest statement a sculpture can make, is to create an interactive piece that is functional. It is one thing if one is a sculptor and planning to create a marble mermaid. It is another thing entirely to design a beautiful bike that does not work. Or build a digging mechanism with the shovels pointing in counterintuitively at the sky. 

Marepe's art look like it should be functional. It felt interactive, but it was not. It was a series of variables in a mismatched equation, that made the secondary exhibition in the side room significantly more entertaining.