Dusk to Dusk, What Scares You?

Dusk to Dusk is an exhibit which visitors have described as “eerie,” “dark,” and “confusing.”

It has elements which will be able to send a chill through everyone.  Alexandra Chapman ’13, a gallery guard, said that the film Dusk and Dawn, 2009 (Erwin Olaf) is the piece which scares her more than any other. The entire time that she watches the film she expects a statement about the difference between light and dark, dusk and dawn, but then the contrast between the importance of form and content takes over the meaning of the end of the film. It’s eerie because of the crying babies, whose shrill cries make your skin crawl. But the sudden change of meaning in the movie is what makes the film so strange in her mind.

Gallery guard Nicolle Chan ’13 said that Marcel Dzama’s Welcome to the land of the bat, 2008, which Samek Director Richard Rinehart related in his curatorial text to the popular cartoon character Winnie the Pooh, is the piece that scares her the most. It is dark, and eerie. When you think of Winnie the Pooh you think of a bear walking around with a jar of honey and singing, not laying on the ground with blood coming out of his neck. She personally doesn’t like bats since they always have a negative connotation to them in movies where they live in a creepy dark cave, and always are shown during a moment of gloom with bats flying towards you evoking your fear as well as the movie characters’. Bats always have a negative connotation, so they shouldn’t be paired with Winnie the Pooh, and when they are paired with a dead and bloody Winnie the Pooh they evoke an unnatural feeling of gloom.

When asked about the Olaf film, she responded “The movie with the crying baby is just annoying. It’s kind of weird, but mostly just annoying. Hearing a crying baby for hours on end can make your hairs stand on end.”

She commented that the exhibit as a whole is not necessarily creepy, rather it is just weird. The photograph of two nude girls (Almagul Menlibayeva, Kissing Totems, 2008) whose faces are covered is just weird, although not the creepiest. It doesn’t really freak her out, it’s just strange, and not a piece of art that she would want to see all the time.  Commenting on the photo with the kids (Rudd van Empel, Generation, 2010), she said that “you can tell that something is slightly off, but you may not notice it at first glance. Then, when you do realize that each kid’s face has indeed been created by piecing different images of eyes, mouths, and noses together to create new faces, you are intrigued, you are drawn in to explore the piece further even though it is really creepy.”

This entire exhibit has pieces of painting, photography, video and sculpture which remove your rose colored glasses and show the world through a darker outlook.

As Rinehart, stated; “Each work in this international selection of renowned contemporary artists rewards the viewer with a compelling encounter that will haunt them in the best way imaginable.”
I encourage you to visit this interesting exhibit, and then let everyone know which piece scares you more than any other by commenting here.

-Katrina Hefele ’13