Conceptural Art - Tumblr Posts
Friday October 7th was the opening of Time Warp, an exhibition of my work held at the Collective Art Space in Grand Rapids, MI. Over the summer, the collective held its first call for proposals. Not only did they accept my group show proposal, but they told me they would prefer it as a solo show instead. So, between August and October I set to work turning an idea for one art piece into the concept for an entire show. My original theme evolved from ancestry into something broader. Eventually I settled on the show description: Time Warp is an exhibition in which time ceases to exist. Within it, Zachary Trebellas invites the audience to explore the intersections of time and identity. Through a variety of artworks, Trebellas encourages viewers to send their voice into the past, contact the future, confront their legacy, and call their parents. I arranged the show chronologically, so the first piece referenced 1016, the last piece referenced 2116, and everything else fell in between. To emphasize that, in lieu of wall labels, I affixed large dates below each piece. The show was a mix of visual writing prompts (e.g. "100 years from now I'll be ________, so today I am _________") and other interactive pieces. Examples include tape recorders for recording messages to one's 2009 self, stationary for writing one's 2023 self, and a world map that asked people to put stickers where their home was 1,000 years ago. Overall, the guests seemed to really engage with the show, and many of them told me it put them in a deep head space. I hadn't expected that, but as I circled the room, looking at each piece, I understood what they meant. The works forced the viewers to consider a lot of different aspects of their lives: their family history, their parents, themselves at different stages in the past and future, their legacy, etc. In one room you had quite a lot you could express. I was excited to see friends' and strangers' reflections in response to the pieces, and I felt as an artist that the show was a success. The only downside was that because of a schedule change with the art space, the exhibition was only up for a day and a half. Still, I think there's a lot more life in these artworks, so I'm already thinking up ways I can continue to execute them. My roommate told me the next morning that her brother had wondered at the show why I asked so many questions of people. I suppose it's that from time to time, I come up with a question that fascinates me so much that I want to know how others would answer it. Through art, those questions help me understand others' better and feel closer to their humanity. The day after the opening I returned to the space and read and listened to everyone's responses. I walked away deeply aware of the beauty and pain that others' possess.
Yoko Ono: Ceiling Painting (1966)
