Drowning underground in images: institute du loop | Open-faced Art

Images from institute du loop's "a place to drown"

On first glance, “a place to drown” is mostly blues, whites and a single strip of green along one wall.

But dig deeper, past the initial gush of images, and a more traditional narrative emerges. It’s a visual tale about a boy, a girl and the confusion and promise of a new, unknown land.

The presentation is both blurred and exact as the mosaic of photos create a wall of images, a pool of images for the audience to drown in.

“I think it’s more about the feelings brought out by the images than the thing you are actually seeing,” Megan Chapman tells me as I struggle to find some context for the onslaught of 124 discrete images fit on five walls.

“A place to drown” is part of the institute du loop exhibit currently on display in the Hive Gallery of the Fayetteville Underground. It will remain in place until July 31. The show was curated by Chapman and displays images captured by a British artist living in Taiwan who creates under the pseudonym “Mr. Loop.”

“If you knew who Mr. Loop was, you might see the work differently, so I’ve tried hard to preserve his anonymity,” Chapman said.

Chapman and others will lead an art talk from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Fayetteville Underground to talk about this show and the other artists that are now on display.

The show marks the first international exhibit shown at the Fayetteville Underground. The connection between Chapman and “Mr. Loop” was fostered several years ago when she began reaching out online to find other artists.

Chapman said she hopes to bring in another foreign artist next month, Christian Demare of Paris, but so far sales of this first international show are nonexistent.

No red dots – the sure sign of a sale – are affixed to the images.

“It’s disappointing,” Chapman confesses. She said she’s hopeful some of the $30 images will be sold so that leadership at the Fayetteville Underground will know bringing in international artists is something the audience wants.

The five walls of the exhibit are accompanied by a soundtrack composed by the artists. The soundtrack sells for $10, a limited edition poster sells for $25 and an exhibition booklet is available for $15.

Chapman said she’s heard repeatedly that people don’t want to break up the images by buying only certain prints.

“It can be pulled apart,” she adds. The images work alone as solo pieces or combined with the surrounding images, she said.

Maybe.

There are some images in “a place to drown” that retain their impact when viewed alone. Specifically, the images depicting people retain the integrity of an individual piece of art.

However, other images are rendered into fat, abstracted blotches of color when divorced from the purposefully sequence of images.

I suppose that’s the beauty of having so many images to choose from.

“People can also buy an entire wall,” Chapman offers.

It’s the five-wall structure that finally helps me “get” Mr. Loop’s intent or at least construct my own narrative for the images. Still, to tease out the meaning I need some instruction from Chapman about the photographer’s own life.

These images all come from a time when Mr. Loop was first discovering Taiwan where he moved about two and a half years ago.

The photos render in visual form the chaotic and impenetrable world of moving to a country where language is a blur because you can’t understand it and culture and norms are still mysterious.

Gradually, the hazy and blurred images find focus, first on inanimate objects and later on a woman, then women.

Chapman tells me that Wall 3 is the recreation of the artist’s first morning with his now ex-girlfriend. She is also an artist and let him rebuild his memory of her on that day. Her blue and white kimono dress figures prominently as do hints of her skin and body as a geometric form.

Wall 3

The site of her nipple near the end of the sequence feels strikingly intimate, as if the audience has been allowed entry into this magical first morning when a connection was made to Taiwan through this woman.

This sequence sets the reader up for Wall 4, the largest grouping of images. Chapman tells me many of these photos were captured at a high-profile art exhibit in Taiwan.

Mr. Loop photographs the observers of that show. I get the sense, through the intermingling of blurred and focused images, that he has now penetrated the culture enough to begin documenting and observing subtle clues no tourist would ever notice.

Wall 4

The final sequence, Wall 5 is a lush green escape to a verdant park scene. The woman in this sequence is in puzzle pieces that made me want to reach out and put the puzzle together.

Wall 5

I think we are lucky to have institute du loop in downtown Fayetteville.

It’s evocative and interesting and slightly challenging, though I think a more direct artist’s statement would help guide the audience through the images to uncover the artist’s intent.

I suggest you go take a look before it’s gone.

institute du loop: a place to drown from Megan Chapman on Vimeo.

P.S. In my last Open-faced Art column, I committed to buying at least once piece of local art and attending a local theatrical production. Well, I ended up buying two art pieces by local artists that are in my home now, and I’ve attended one local production.

An art talk on Institute du loop’s “a place to drown” and others

Where: Fayetteville Underground’s Hive Gallery, 1 E. Center St.

When: Noon to 2 p.m. Saturday

For more information check out the Fayetteville Underground website or Megan Chapman’s art blog.

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