TMA has displayed several exhibits including the works of Matise and most recently Musical Lines in My Hand. | James Borchuck / St. Petersburg Times
Half naked people posing in awkward positions, truck drivers in drag, and large steel structures warped by music: this is not your typical Saturday night in Ybor, folks.
The Tampa Museum of Art (TMA), a newly built hot spot for the modern art connoisseur located on Ashley Street, across the Hillsborough River, has something different for you to do on the weekends.
You can walk from campus and within minutes find yourself immersed in an art-tastic experience.
Currently there are several new exhibits on display at the TMA, the first titled Musical Lines in My Hand located in the Farish Gallery.
Local sculptor Dominique Labauvie has created tangible music out of ambiguously sculpted steel.
Each sculpture is as unique as the hook from your favorite song.
The sculptures are made of raw blackened steel and molded into asymmetrical lines.
The utilization of negative space helps the viewer to fill in the implied musical notes that remain invisible to the naked eye, but are heard nonetheless.
Labauvie’s Tim Burton-esque creatures display shadows on the walls and floor, adding an effect similar to the echoing resonance of piano keys.
My favorite pieces included Hephaistos Tears, After the Rain, and Sources. They stood out because of their oddly shaped symphonies and strangely mangled steel.
It was as if I could hear what Labauvie was trying to compose … no, wait.
I was hearing music; however, it wasn’t coming from this display.
Continuing along the labyrinth of the museum, I found its source. In an exhibit with walls painted in midnight black, there were several anterooms dedicated to film noir theaters.
The director of these short films is Jesper Just, a Danish artist who uses the medium of the silver screen to convey complex, controversial and downright strange plot lines.
The first film was titled Romantic Delusions. Just uses Romania’s backdrop in this story of a transgender individual. Overall,
I found the film to be a bit creepy, and buried in far too much symbolism to make any sense at all.
I left the room feeling no more enlightened than when I had entered.
I took my seat in the second anteroom, where Just’s Bliss and Heaven played. Filmed in Denmark, it tells the story of a man who follows a truck driver into the back of his semi and is transported to a magical theatre.
This Narnia-like experience leaves the curious man unfazed as he watches the truck driver sing his rendition of Olivia Newton-John’s Please Don’t Keep Me Waiting in drag.
The film ended with the man giving “Mr.” Newton-John a standing ovation. No one in the museum audience had been able to keep a straight face during the truck driver’s performance, myself included.
If Just had any hidden agenda within Heaven and Bliss, it was certainly lost upon us, but I definitely recommend seeing this video.
I was pleasantly surprised with Just’s third attempt to portray misunderstood art.
No Man is an Island was the shortest film of the three I saw, clocking in at around four minutes.
The scenes consist of a middle aged tap dancer who is tapping up a storm in the midst of a bustling city while old-timey music overwhelms the speakers.
A younger man cries as he watches the performance, whereas children in the background simply laugh and mock the man mercilessly.
Being a dancer myself, I completely understood the point Just was trying to make. The tap dancing man who epitomizes the saying “dance as if no one is watching,” and the younger man who cries in silence are really two parts of the same person.
They fuse together to create a single man—one half representing the torrent of emotion experienced in maturity, and other the carefree joy of youth.
TMA has two floors. The first features a expansive welcome area and cafe and the artwork is displayed on the second. | James Borchuck / St. Petersburg Times
The fear of being criticized is mirrored by the pure unbridled happiness of performance.
This was a film I could relate to completely, and became my favorite of the three pieces Just has on display. The final featured exhibit was ‘80s Photography from the Collection.
I was underwhelmed by the small collection of pieces that filled the Ferman Gallery.
This was the decade where Michael Jackson thrived and thrilled, Van Halen melted faces and Madonna made teens into material girls.
Most of the pieces, however, lacked a certain pizzaz that I thought would’ve been required of any collection that boasted the ‘80s in its title.
Photos like Eileen Corwin’s Untitled (The Bathers) appeared forcefully posed and less than organic—there was simply a disconnect between the audience and the artist.
The only piece in the gallery that held my interest was a twelve panel masterpiece titled Indian Summer/Nuclear Winter by Patrick Nagatani and Andreé Tracey.
The piece was composed of mixed media elements, and read like a story from left to right and right to left.
Two Adam and Eve figures walk through a blue-green rain forest which shifts into a hawk mid-flight on a yellow-orange backdrop.
Your eyes pass over to a man painted black and contrasted on a red background.
He shares his agony with photos of what appear to be elite businessmen who toast their glasses to the hurting man’s pain.
The final panels shift from vivid sunset reds to blacks, whites and grays with the only color coming from a man streaked in red.
From innocence to violence, this is the piece that did the ‘80s justice in my eyes. It told the story of a poignant decade in American history, and was honest in its imagery.
Though I had come to the conclusion of the featured exhibits, TMA hosts a medley of other galleries which include artifacts from ancient times and a room full of cities made entirely of recycled material.
Leo Villareal’s LED (Light Emitting Diodes) pieces are also on display in the MacKechnie Gallery. Villareal is the man behind the Museum’s multi-colored roof which lights up each night with his programmed LED show.
The Museum has a traveling exhibit as well, titled Photographic Foundations, which is currently on display at Eckerd College from Aug. 20-Oct. 8.
The Tampa Museum of Art is an experience I would recommend to any UT student looking for an unconventional way to spend their Saturday afternoon.
Their website tampamuseum.org has information on museum hours and admission (students are $5 when you show your Spartan I.D.).
You don’t have to be an art major to appreciate the beauty of this colorful museum and you certainly don’t have to go to Ybor to find oddities and fun.
