More Art for Thought

We also went to Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence. Before large art exhibitions, crowds were awed by traveling shows called “phantasmagoria” in which familiar scenes and stories were performed with the use of magic lanterns and rear projections to create dancing shadows and frightening theatrical effects. These events incorporated storytelling, mythology, and theater in a single art form that entertained while providing a space for thinking about the viewers’ anxieties regarding death and the afterlife. A comparable trend can be seen in works by contemporary artists who create ghostly images to reflect on notions of absence and loss, using spectral effects and immaterial mediums such as shadows, fog, mist, and breath. These artists’ approaches range from the festive to the ironic, counterbalancing the emotionally charged, often somber implications of their subject matter. This show was a collection of some of these works. Check out this one -- it is kind of cool.

http://www.mdlx.com/pages/phantasmagoria/phantasmagoria.html