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• “Under Control” artistically explores media forms

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Los Torreznos Election Night (detail), 2007 Video installation, 35 minutes Courtesy of the artists © Los Torreznos

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Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion »
Address: 500 E. Peabody Drive Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: (217) 333-1861
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Pushing the envelope is quite a clichéd understatement for the Krannert Art Museum exhibit entitled “Under Control,” which opened Oct. 23. The curators, Judith Hoos Fox and Ginger Gregg Duncan, started developing the exhibit at the beginning of the last presidential election. They were concerned about control in the government, which led their work to 16 artists presenting approximately 30 works at the exhibit, all of which have been created within the last ten years.

In the exhibition’s companion catalog, Fox and Duncan wrote, “The artists whose work is represented in ‘Under Control’ slip into the proverbial back room to question and reveal where control lies.”

The exhibit focuses on political control within organizations such as corporations and governments. It is not a right vs. left, right vs. wrong exhibit, but rather an exploratory look at the “dynamic that if someone is in charge, there is a victim and a perpetrator,” said Fox. “This (body of) work makes it unclear if you are the prisoner or the guard.”

Various forms of media exist in “Under Control, from a continual 35-minute video about the spectacle of elections by the duo Los Torrenzos, to the oil-on-linen painting “Detainee Summary 2” by Jenny Holzer concerning declassified government.

The question listed in the exhibit’s display is, “who controls whom and what, and where does that leave the rest of us?”

This is a very prevalent question in the piece “Screenshot Series,” which consists of 20 chromogenic prints from digital files created in Photoshop. Jon Haddock produced the piece in 2000. The piece is a collection of stills from movies like Sound of Music and Godfather II, and past events such as the Columbine attack and the Tiananmen Square protest. There is a connection between all the stills about race, minority and violence, making a spectator question the authority to kill and who has it.

Another notable piece was David Opdyke’s 2005 ink on paper: “It’s All About U.S.” The piece is a 2D drawing of the world, but a closer look will reveal that it is made up of multiple outlines of the United States. It is a depiction of how the United States’ influence is prevalent everywhere. The work questions the necessity of this prevalence.

The “Under Control” exhibit is a must—see artistic exploration of relevant political themes, which represents many forms of media and cultural backgrounds. The exhibit runs through Jan. 3.