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Mideast and Midwest
Say the words “art museum” and most people envision galleries of paintings, photographs and sculptures.
What they probably don’t envision is an emerging type of art exhibit that relies on a carefully-executed combination of mixed mediums to immerse viewers in an alternate world while pushing creative boundaries to new realms.
This form of exhibit is known as a mixed media installation, and Louis Zona, director of the Butler Institute of American Art, said it’s changing how we think about art.
“With a mixed-media installation, an artist is given a gallery to make a statement using any means,” Zona explained. “Mixed-media installations broaden our ideas about art and our appreciation of art.”
The mixed-media installation “Mideast. Midwest. Middle Class,” by Pittsburgh artist Jake Marsico, is on display at The Butler through Jan. 22.
Marsico’s mixed-media installation relies on large format photography, audio, video and interactive lighting to make a statement about Midwestern households affected by the regional economic downturn — specifically schoolteachers and the shrinking middle class.
It features photographs of Midwestern schoolteachers, video footage of a Middle Eastern passenger train and myriad sound and lighting effects.
Marsico, who defines himself primarily as a portrait photographer, said this is his first mixed-media installation.
“The idea for the installation came in April 2011, and I’ve been working on it since then, traveling to and from Ohio and Wisconsin and programming the lights,” he said. “Some of the objects, such as the tram video, are from my time living in Egypt a few years ago.”
Marsico spent a year in Alexandria, Egypt, and then three and half years in Dubai, UAE, before returning to the United States in the spring of 2010.
“The whole time I was living overseas, I had a very romantic memory of the U.S. When I came back, we were still in the midst of the fallout from the 2008 [economic] collapse. It was pretty shocking. Then, these anti-public union initiatives [in Ohio and Wisconsin] came out and it seemed like those pieces of legislation really embodied the trajectory of our country’s economic and social policies and goals. Downgrading the importance of education is something I expected elsewhere, but not here. Living there, then coming here, it became clear that we may be headed in the wrong direction,” he said.
Marsico said creating a mixed-media installation is an intricately involved, time-consuming process quite unlike making a photograph, which is what he is most accustomed to.
“Making a photograph is a relatively quick process. No matter how much time you spend planning or waiting for lighting or scenes to develop, the act of making the photo is instant,” he said. “This installation was a completely new and much longer process for me. Each part of the installation was essentially its own work. The audio was done at one time, the lights at another, the photography at another. I was always thinking about the relationship between the many parts, but it was strange working on a large project that only existed in its entirety in my head until a few days before the opening.”
Marsico said he did not personally know the public school teachers he photographed for the exhibit.
“Most I met through friends of friends. A few of the couples from Wisconsin I met through pro-teachers’ union groups on Facebook,” Marsico said. “My original goal was to photograph a mix of teachers of all ages. I contacted countless younger teachers ... none of them agreed to participate for fear of losing their jobs. With the anti-collective bargaining legislation passed in both Ohio and Wisconsin, many of the younger teachers didn’t know what repercussions might come from being involved in anything political.”
Marsico hopes viewers of his installation get the message he is sending, even if they experience confusion at first.
“Hopefully [people experience] a mix of confusion with an amount of comprehension or understanding,” he said, adding, “It’s hard for us to make sense or make connections with everything that’s happening in the world. We watched the Arab Spring and felt compassion for the protestors, but it was a foreign event, very much outside our daily world. Then the legislation about collective bargaining came about in Ohio and Wisconsin and it hit a little closer to home. Either way, it was all very chaotic, and strangely connected.”
Zona said Marsico’s mixed media installation is not the only one currently featured at the Butler.
Museum visitors can also experience George Dyens’ “Lux ex chaos,” a mixed- media installation reflecting a deep concern for humankind and the environment.
Dyens uses holograms, sculpture and concert as a means of his primary means of expression.