Exhibit inspires reflection on how people approach conceptual art
Dennis Dingman stares at the 100-foot-long wall covered with symmetrically arranged loaves of burnt bread at the Washington Pavilion.
He's dwarfed by the 20-foot-tall artwork but doesn't appear surprised or bewildered. He's expressionless, studying the thousands of blackened baguettes nailed up by New Yorker Lishan Chang.
Munching on snacks during a recent reception for Chang's "LC Bakery" show, Dingman, 70, reveals that he knows a bit about conceptual art but doesn't feel qualified to pass judgment.
"The unique thing about it is how it was made, and how now it's here on the wall," the Sioux Falls art patron says. "No one has seen it before and probably never will see it again. It's unique."
His wife, Carol Dingman, isn't sure how to react.
"It's over the top," she says, laughing. "Just over the top. It is interesting, and it means something, maybe to the artist - something very profound? I don't know."
Chang's work prompts the age-old question, "What is art?" Artists and teachers say art doesn't have to be "beautiful" but should make people think.
Still, some observers think of art only as paintings of a landscape, a barn, pheasants taking off or ducks landing, says artist and retired Augustana College art teacher Carl Grupp of Sioux Falls.
Many area exhibits have challenged the more narrow notion of art.
The August 2006 Pavilion exhibit called "Do Not Fold, Bend, Spindle or Mutilate: Computer Punch Card Art" included cards decorated by artists across the country.
A current Pavilion exhibit features settings Nebraska artist Josh Johnson built from Lincoln Logs and small plastic animals.
And there's Chang, who recently was on-site producing and installing his "blackery," a term he coined referring to the blackened surface of the burnt baguettes.
The process used to make the loaves, then burn them, is as much the "art" as the finished product, says David Merhib, the Pavilion's director of the Visual Arts Center.
The Banquet and Breadsmith let Chang use their facilities to mix, shape and bake the bread. He used 10 electric ovens on the Pavilion loading dock to burn bread for nearly two weeks.
Viewers can use all of their senses to experience the total package: They listen to a recording of the crackling the loaves make as they cool; they smell the burned bread; they touch and even buy the extra loaves; and they inspect huge photographic blow-ups of the rugged patterns on the bread.
While the average viewer may puzzle over the exhibit - some even soundly trash it in the gallery comment book - artists have other opinions.
"I was very impressed," Grupp says.
"He's using the materials like ink. It's just another way of making marks. It reminds me of calligraphy, and he's got some rhythms going there," Grupp says. "It's just another medium. Some people freaked out when artists started using computers, but it's accepted now."
Ceca Cooper, a painter and assistant professor of art at the University of Sioux Falls, calls the exhibit "pretty fabulous."
But understanding and enjoying the display might require some education for folks who have not seen much beyond traditional art, she says.
Some people think artists should create only aesthetically pleasing work, something beautiful to look at, she says.
"No one could possibly understand it unless they know what conceptual art really is," Cooper says. "The end product is not what really matters.
"It's the intellectual thoughts that the artist had behind the piece," she says. "I am excited to see the Pavilion put up something so edgy, and hopefully it will begin to educate the community on what conceptual art is."
Asking the question "Is it art?" sets up a negative connotation, says painter Liz Bashore Heeren, an assistant professor of art at South Dakota State University in Brookings.
"Maybe better questions are: 'Why is this art, what is this teaching us, and is this art that I appreciate?' " Bashore Heeren says. " 'And if I don't like it, then why is that, and what is lacking? Or what good qualities am I responding to?' "
Reactions to an installation often is based on how a viewer was raised to appreciate art, she says. In this geographic region, people's assumptions often have not been challenged, she says.
"My reaction to the installation is that I thought it was very interesting," Bashore Heeren says. She also liked pictures of Chang's other art to compare.
"The burnt bread is such a strange thing: It looks like a sea slug coated in graphite, such an undefinable form when it's burnt," she says. "It's familiar but unfamiliar, and I find that kind of curious. It's like a form of writing I don't understand or can't read."
The Abstract
People have asked Wall Lake artist Robert Ruf what his abstract paintings are supposed to be.
"I don't get that kind of comment in Chicago, where they say, 'I like this or those colors,' so it's a different kind of culture in the bigger cities where they are more used to a broad range of art," Ruf says.
His January exhibit, "Surrounded," at the Multi-Cultural Center enveloped visitors inside abstract oil colors and patterns painted on more than a dozen of 8-foot-tall clear plastic panels.
"Since the turn of the 20th century, it would be foolish for people to exactly nail down what art is, like they did in the Renaissance period, because there are so many different mediums you can use now," Ruf says.
"Sculptures used to be made primarily of marble or stone, but today they use all kinds of materials. Today, art covers a lot of ground."
Pavilion visitor Dingman continues to munch reception snacks while looking at the exhibit.
"It's hard for me to comment on this, because downstairs I was just looking at the lithographs and paintings which I like, and I really enjoy the photo exhibit down there, too," Dingman says.
"This looks to me like it should be forming something up there, the way they are arranged - like letters or something," he says.
The artist Chang, 37, is nearby, smiling and greeting visitors.
He speaks of eliminating the bread's utilitarian function and adding his own artistic language.
"In a way, this process rather resembles painting," Chang says. "I take the medium and convert it into an artistic material. I look at the space and soon have a map in my mind. I know beforehand what I'm going to do with this space."
Dingman turns away from the work and looks at huge photographs of individual burnt loaves on the facing wall.
"I kind of like these better than the installation," he says. "The close-up photos of the textures are more intriguing to me."
Reach reporter Jay Kirschenmann at 331-2312.
