"Beyond Peaks Through Branches," 2010
Acrylic and reflective tape on wood panel.
As of two minutes ago, I was lying in bed, trying to sleep with very little success (it is currently 2:57 am). Visual Overload. Consider this my medical condition for the evening, one that has not only prevented me from falling asleep, but has been exacerbated by the artwork that I saw at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts earlier today (technically yesterday).
Elizabeth Mooney’s exhibition, “Shifting Panoramas,” is an attempt, in her words, “[to] present viewers with an abstracted vantage of place and space in an attempt to reconsider our ideas of beauty within the landscape. The intent with [her] work is to challenge the viewer to reconsider how they engage with nature and the accelerated pace at which the experience it.” To put it simply, her work falls short of this valiant purpose. Mooney’s mixed-media collages and paintings are a clichéd, unrealistic representation of human perception of nature, in which she portrays the environment as one of haphazard and chaotic forms, leaving little to the imagination. There is no ambiguity in her work, no granule of uncertainty to reflect upon, and this is where she loses grasp of her intention to challenge the viewer and of any credible representation of nature. In my experience, as I constantly perceive the world around me, I am often challenged to find scenes where lines are always deliberate and transitions always sudden; rather, I perceive a world of complexity, in which beginnings and ends – and the spaces between – are gradual and inseparable. Mooney creates a fictional canon of personal interactions with nature to which she suggests we must all subscribe.
To make matters worse, the images are crowded with an over-abundance of parts.– neon lines, undertones of wood, and sky-like backgrounds – each of which lack any relation to another. The result: An assembly of parts lacking a compositional whole. Her pieces additionally lack variation, quickly becoming hackneyed and trite. Within a matter of seconds, I wanted to turn around and leave. Once I had seen one, I had seen them all, and yet I still left feeling as though my senses were exhausted and overloaded....
Photo source: http://www.elizabethmooney.com/painting_B.html
I saw the Elizabeth Mooney show at PCA a number of times. I went there with the Eighth grade on at least 4 occasions. I was actually struck by the works and spent time in that gallery on a number of the visits. I found the "shifty-ness" to work. I jumped right into one and recalled a road trip through a certain stretch of Southern Maryland two-lane road. I think "hackneyed and trite" is a shade harsh...okay, the rotating traffic cone/kaliedescope pushed some limit for me...but that was a fav (!) with the younger students! I am curious to know if you got to have a look at Elin Lennox's photos?
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