Art with motion to challenge students
Einstein once said, “Nothing happens until something moves.”
Movement is an essential part of life. Life cannot exist in a static environment.
Movement has been the cornerstone of Gary Justis’s Kinetic Sculpture for the past 30 years.
With the help of digital projection units, which cover the nearest wall with animated images and speakers, which emit mechanical chatter, some of his pieces do actually move, while, in some of the sculptures, movement is implied.
“Dreams and Reason: Sculpture by Gary Justis” debuted at the Tarble Arts Center Sunday and will run through Feb. 1.
The show will conclude with a lecture from Justis on Feb. 2 at 7 p.m. in the Tarble Art Center Atrium.
Justis’s works are inspired by his interest in the cause-and-effect operations of machinery.
“Employing a vocabulary of naked mechanical fabrication – aluminum, steel, plastic, wood, wire and eccentric kinetic rhythms – motors, sound, video, he finds metaphors for the complexity and imperfection of human actions,” said the biography posted on his Web site.
His work has been the subject of more than 100 exhibitions, has been included in numerous public and corporate collections, and has been reviewed in several publications including Art in America, Arts Magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times and The Chicago Tribune.
Originally from Maize, Kan., a small farming community of approximately 600 people, Justis moved to Chicago in 1977 and earned his master of fine arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979.
He now lives in Bloomington and is a professor at Illinois State University.
“I expect that a lot of people will be challenged by the work,” said Robert Watts, director of the Tarble Arts Center. “And hopefully some will find that, like all other art, Justis’s sculptures tell us things about ourselves and about society.”
Two of Justis’s new works, as well as the popular “Community Machine Gun,” will be featured in the show.
“We do a wide range of programs, but definitely a part of that is presenting art by emerging artists as well as established artists who are pushing boundaries with new media,” Watts said.
Currently the only piece on display is “Community Machine Gun.” The rest will be in place by Tuesday.
Jason Hardimon can be reached at 581-7942
