“Away from Home,” the Wexner Center for the Arts’ new exhibit, is set to open at the Columbus College of Art and Design’s Canzani Center Gallery. Like the “From Pop to Now” exhibit, it will be displayed away from the Wexner Center while its gallery areas undergo renovation.
The works on display will explore the theme of being away from home in a number of ways and media. The theme of the exhibit is appropriate because the Wexner Center exhibits are also away from home, said Karen Simonian, spokeswoman for the Wexner Center.
Franz Ackerman, a native of Germany, will present a 50-foot wall mural, which was commissioned for the exhibition.
“The whole idea got started with the invitation. Before that, this piece didn’t exist, which means it is a specific piece made just for the theme and just for this location,” Ackerman said.
Ackerman has been working on the mural with the help of his brother. The mural is made up of large, vividly colored shapes and four orange centers, but as work progresses smaller elements will be added, which will create the main story in the piece, Ackerman said.
“These kinds of centers are ambivalent. They can be planets on the one side, but they can also be four elusive views. They look like sunrises and sunsets; it’s very romantic,” Ackerman said.
Gregory Green’s work “M.I.T.A.R.B.U.” features a variety of electronic devices, which are all set up under the canopy of a Volkswagen bus.
“The piece is called ‘M.I.T.A.R.B.U.,’ which stands for mobile Internet, television and radio broadcasting unit,” Green said. “It’s a restored 1967 Volkswagen Westfalia Campmobile that has a complete-but-modest sound recording, video recording, and Internet studio. It also has a 35-watt FM radio transmission system, and 100-watt television transmitter.”
The bus’s pirate communication devices — with the exception of the television transmitter — will be open for the use of visitors who want to send a message via the airwaves.
“Television brings the authorities right away; radio takes two or three months,” Green said.
Green wants the participants to have absolute freedom to broadcast whatever they would like.
“There’s no curatorial agenda about what’s broadcast; you can do whatever you want, from farting on the radio to doing something serious,” Green said.
One group of pictures on display uses an optical illusion to convey the theme of “away from home.”
“These are from the ‘Hello Goodbye’ series by Raoul Cordera, and they’re lenticulars, which means when you walk across, you can see the room before he occupied it and after he occupied it,” said Annetta Massie, curator of the exhibit.
Another piece is a model of a Japanese teahouse with a wooden frame and clean open spaces. The artist, Lee Mingwei, grew up in Taiwan, where such teahouses were once common in the countryside, Massie said.
A short film titled “Consolation Service” by Eija-Liisa Ahtila examines the disintegration of a family.
“It’s sort of like a documentary and kind of like cinematic fantasy. You kind of know parts are real and others are not real,” Massie said.
In her work, “Sout Piel,” Lisa Brice uses common instructional pictograms to illustrate violent scenes such as a car-jacking. The glowing pictures have a darkly humorous effect.
“Even though they all deal with fearful situations, they are very entertaining,” Massie said.
Work by Jac Leirner, Ken Lum, Marco Ramirez, Jill Rowinski and Allora y Calzadilla will also be on display.
“Away from Home” runs from Saturday to April 20. Admission is free to the public.
