By: Sandy Zapata/Staff writer
sandy.zapata@fiusm.com
The aptly chosen name of this year’s art exhibition is hosted by 18 University art students. Sensoria, the plural form of the word sensorium, is the part of the brain that receives and delivers specific reactions to experiences in the world.
Every spring semester, Professor Tori Arpad-Cotta, teaches the installation arts class at the University.
The students enrolled in this class work closely with the Wolfsonian-FIU Art Museum to learn the processes’ that go into making and hosting an installation art exhibit.
In addition, they will also work with the assistance of DACRA in Miami; they enable the students with the space to exhibit their work every semester.
Griselle Gaudnik-Gibbon, art history and fine arts senior, is one of the students who exhibited her art this year.
When asked to define installation art, she said, “An installation is hard to define because anything can be an installation and a lot of times it’s site specific.”
At a glance, the concept and idea of installation seems vague. The fact of the matter is that the kind of art that installation encompasses can only be experienced in person.
On Saturday, April 14, the installation arts students, along with their family, friends and onlookers, opened the doors of the gallery, located in the Buena Vista Building in the Design District of Miami for everyone to experience.
At the event, Mike Wood, father-in-law of Gabrielle Wood, expressed his sentiments of this year’s event. “I think it’s outstanding, there’s just so much going on… this is well thought, well laid out and I’m really enjoying it.”
The layout of the exhibit consists of wide open spaces, projectors, interactive rooms with an audience of three, an overexposed room of media versus knowledge, smaller rooms with bright lights and noisy rooms with broken disco balls.
To Wood, the broken disco ball on the floor in a room filled with glitter with a Lady Gaga song playing and photos of men on the floor represents the “death of the 1960’s,” but to others it could have meant a million different things, which is the point of the event.
Violet Forrest, art history and arts senior at the University was also in attendance for the opening night.
“I think this exhibit pushes the limits a little more than any other exhibit I’ve seen in Art Walk tonight.”
It is a constant push and shove of the senses, from your auditory to your visual senses; this exhibit is far from short of stimulation.
Wood, in congruence with Forrest said, “It’s real noise; its visually noisy and auditory noisy. You’ve got excitement and then you’ve got that serenity.”
The applied techniques and knowledge received from the staff members and the students’ professor has truly paid off.
The goal of introducing a piece of art and having it infuse your senses was conquered by all the student artists of the University.
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