Review: Then and Now: Ten Years of Residencies at The Center for Book Arts

Then and Now: Ten Years of Residencies at The Center for Book Arts

September 8 – November 8, 2015

Castle Gallery

29 Castle Pl, New Rochelle, NY 10805

Review: Then and Now: Ten Years of Residencies at The Center for Book Arts

Stepping inside of the Castle gallery, viewing the gargantuan amount of artwork may have you confused on where and how to begin. The colors and essence these works emitted absolutely screamed “politics”! Exploring further, you may find that many of the artworks shown dealt with immigration, politics, race, identity, and other issues affecting the world today.

The spectrum of what were used to make these books is huge. Some artists made use of traditional media, while others made use of digital media, creating videos and printing on paper. There are at least three videos here, and you may have to be careful not to bump into any works that protruded from the wall.

One example of artwork that stood out was Tal Halpern’s The Whisperers, a colored comic that had somewhat of a Neo-noir feel to it. The less-than-human subject of the comic is shown going through another repetitive day of work, all the while having an emotionless expression. This piece gives off somewhat of a capitalistic message: we as human beings work in order to survive and eventually become objects to be used upon in the system, which may explain the appearance of the character. Because the art piece is in comic format, I was personally able to relate to it more than any other art piece inside of the gallery, due to my affection for sequential art.

It may have been possible to relate to more pieces of work if there weren’t so many pieces here at once. There was practically no space for any of the pieces to breathe. It may become overwhelming to try to look and pay attention at everything here, and the messages that the artwork tried to spread to viewers only seemed to battle against each other instead of working together. I eventually found out that the gallery contained artwork from a whopping number of 60 artists. There was too much going on, and it would have been more beneficial if there were fewer artworks shown, or if they were placed in a bigger spaced gallery.

Then and Now features many works of art that shows themes of racial, social, political issues and more. Unfortunately, because the pieces are given absolutely no space, it is quite difficult to see and even acknowledge these themes.