Exhibits showcase the power of language
In the hands of accomplished artists, just a single word or two — or three, at the most — can dazzle viewers with powerful, striking imagery.
Concurrent, complementary exhibits at Columbus College of Art & Design’s Beeler Gallery demonstrate this feat, making use of text and design in contemporary art. One body of work is a display of nearly 200 posters by artists from around the world, each using the word “tolerance” in their native language. The other exhibit, sharing the Beeler Gallery space, is an installation of new works by Columbus artist and retired Ohio State University professor Michael Mercil.
Tolerance Project
The posters, of which there are so many they are also displayed outside the gallery in the Canzani Center lobby, as well as at the Loann Crane Center for Design across the street – are bold, colorful and mesmerizing in their distinctive graphic designs. In many ways, they express the meaning and dimensions of tolerance.
The traveling poster project was launched in 2017 by Mirko Ilic following a tolerance-themed film festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Posters are added to the project as it travels the world, with CCAD as the 150th edition of the exhibit. CCAD alum Dave Flaherty, a New York City artist, added his stunning orange and blue poster to the array.
‘Some Thing(s)’
Mercil’s works in his “Some Thing(s)” exhibit are minimalist drawings, enameled metal panels and needlepoint works of single words formed from simple, block letters. The artist has said that the two-dimensional pieces are things and not stand-ins for images.
In one room, the words “Moby Dick” are found in the middle of a large yellow wall. Sparsely hung on surrounding walls are found objects – cardboard scraps and a wooden bucket, for example – all at the same eye level as the words and presumably, the horizon line between sea and sky. Viewers entering the room feel a sense of quiet and the notion that they’re standing at the surface of the water, viewing what can be seen of an immense whale.
Mercil, who is married to and maintains a German Village studio with multimedia artist Ann Hamilton, has long been drawn to the look, concepts and idiosyncrasies of language and print. He has brought to the CCAD exhibit a practice he began years ago on the OSU campus: reading aloud from newspapers. From 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. each Tuesday and Thursday in Beeler Gallery, he reads from the print version of The Dispatch, simply going over bits of weather, sports, obituary and more news.
On the wall of the venue for this exercise are huge red letters: “Free Admission.” Mercil playfully calls this venue the “Fair and Square University – an institution
of higher learning where admission is free, thinking is dead and you are enrolled.”
Also in the Beeler Gallery
Texas artists Hollis Hammond and Sarah West collaborated on the beautiful but heartbreaking installation “Awake in the Dark,” located in yet another room of Beeler Gallery. Cast-off objects, plastic recyclables and other things are clustered in front of Hammond’s large drawings of nomadic people, ruined cars and debris, as well as videos of flowing water – an environmental apocalypse. On a soundtrack, West reads her poems, sorrowful analyses of climate change and unfettered consumption, and further proof of the power of language in contemporary art.
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