Art/ Cultural event (3)

7th March, 2007
Art Lecture: Candidate of Faculty member— Chris Coleman

Frankly, I like this lecture very much. Not only because of the interesting ideas behind the works of the artist; I gave credits to the artist’s good presentation skill.

Before becoming an artist, Chris Coleman was a Mechanical Engineer. I guess his former occupation did affect the choice of art works he makes. Before we listen to any information from him, he used a video clip as an introduction of his presentation.

It was a 3-minutes video clip shooting a chimney keeps producing and take-in the smoke it produces. The video have no narrative, no words, no information about the idea of this art works. Instead, there was breathing sound kept repeating in 3 minutes.

Some people may find that irritating. Honestly, I was bored by the video and wonder what message he wants to give before his explanation. The artist explained, we are actually breathing with the factory everyday, especially in city. The sky may look clear and clean, but the pollutants are actually collaborated in the air. Everyone of us should be condemned of pollution, because we buy the products and seldom aware of the pollution problem.
I appreciate his idea of putting environmental-friendly in art work; yet, the idea was hard to get without the artist’s explanation.

Another interesting work of Chris Coleman was the animation.
The animation he made was actually composed of the images we can see from airplane brochure. He brought out the fear and terror, safety and hazard ideas. He tried to use the same language to bring every daily event in a piece.

More of his art works could be found on his web site.