If modern art has lost its luster, and progressive voice and postmodernism is overly complex, how can artistic expression retain its individuality?
The answer is in the emerging genre of art called remodernism.
This new style of art is a fusion of modernism, postmodernism and the avant-garde.
Remodernism aims to regain the progressive influence of the artist and is the focus of the ReMo exhibit at ≠Magnifico! Artspace, which is at 516 Central Ave. SW.
"Remodernism isn't about going backwards, but about surging forward," Kevin Radley said at an artist's talk on Saturday. Radley is an art professor at the University of California-Berkeley. "It's a process of reconstruction, reevaluation, reinvention and reassessment."
ReMo features works from UNM graduate students Glenn Kawabata and Dean Olson, and UNM art master's degree graduates Jennifer Burkley and Yoshimi Hayashi.
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"A lot of these pieces aren't done in the traditional sense, with the brush to the canvas," Radley said. "It's more of a choreography of tools."
Kawabata's work consists of a series of programs that focus on the phenomenological nature of images.
Kawabata describes his work as a form of alchemy that transforms photographic paper into an object with a life of its own.
Olson presents viewers with a meditative moment in his barely visible drawings of silent spaces done by a metal-point renaissance technique.
"I wanted to present something that was tangible while it occurred, but isn't anymore," Olson said of the subtle drawings.
Burkley's polymer rubber pieces focus on texture with an allusion to body painting.
Her work includes a series of red dots that explore linear relationships and fluid, mixed with color.
"These pieces are about that moment when you have been cut . the exact moment when the blood beads up, right before you realize that something terrible has happened," Burkley said.
Hayashi's work showcases repetitive handwriting to form rhythmic patterns on objects like a 20-foot-high chalkboard and a cocktail napkin.
"Much of my work references the everyday journey, an emphasis on repetitive gestures that weave a greater pattern," Hayashi said.
Hayashi, who also is the curator of the exhibit, says the next stop for ReMo is either San Francisco or Los Angeles after its run in Albuquerque.
"Many great things come from places outside of New York or Los Angeles," Hayashi said of the show's local start. "In Albuquerque, people are always looking for something new because of the high number of emerging artists in New Mexico. Albuquerque is a great place to introduce remodernism."
Hayashi feels ReMo viewers will identify with the pieces presented.
"Joseph Campbell once said that beautiful art puts you in an aesthetic arrest," Hayashi said. "Hopefully people can sit in front of these beautiful dots or this art that can barely be seen and just have their moment."
