According to artist Claudia Vess, Styrofoam is a reflection of our culture; of the items we consume and the products we buy. This is why she makes such extensive use of the medium in her artwork currently featured in the exhibit "CC Vess: Paintings, Prints & Wall Sculpture" at the Landow Gallery in Bethesda.
Vess, an AU alumnus, showcases 34 of her pieces of various mediums, including assemblage, encaustic and monotype printmaking. But the emphasis is on her Styrofoam sculptures.
Vess's work is the type of art that only an artist or connoisseur of the arts will love. She works primarily in assemblage using Styrofoam, found objects and paint. To the viewer uneducated in art, many of her pieces look like Styrofoam and rubbish that have been pasted together and occasionally splashed with brightly colored paint.
Nevertheless, one can easily see that Vess has an exceptional eye for spotting the visually interesting in everyday objects and incorporating these found items into her work. This talent manifests itself in finest form in her piece "OHNE TITEL." The work is a wall-sized installation compiled from dozens of Styrofoam pieces that Vess recycled from the packing material of various appliances and electronics.
The piece is stunning for both its imposing size and the skill with which Vess placed these unique forms into a unified whole. Circles and vertical and horizontal lines are arranged in such a way to unify the image and draw the eye throughout it. The piece suggests a mechanical world of integrated gears, pipes, and chambers.
This large piece dominates the gallery and rightfully overshadows Vess's small Styrofoam works, which are less successful in their execution. The artist created most of her smaller pieces using one to three Styrofoam pieces assembled together. Some are accented with bright paint or other unusual objects. Unfortunately, the visually interesting aspects of the works were not created by Vess herself but by the manufacturer of the Styrofoam, and the beauty is more in the Styrofoam relief than in the particular way it is displayed. While Vess deserves credit for recognizing the beauty in these objects, her manner of display is mediocre at best.
Vess's non-Styrofoam assemblage pieces are her weakest work on display. While the Styrofoam pieces merit limited praise for Vess's use of a unique medium, pieces such as "TOP SCHOLAR" and "RACOON" feature nothing stunning or innovative to distinguish her art from that of her peers.
Vess finds more success in her monotype prints "LES FLEURS DU MAL" which feature clusters of dead flowers. Vess skillfully experiments with contrast in this series of black and white prints, beautiful in their simplicity and fittingly supplementing the artist's other work by contrasting the planned chaos of the assemblage.
Vess said she was interested in the dynamics of the art making process. However, the bottom line is that in a gallery setting, patrons see the result, not the process. While Vess deserves accolades for her experimentation with a unique medium, her results are inconsistent in quality and success. The exhibit is worth a visit for the art student desiring exposure to different mediums, but the average person will leave unsatisfied.
