The SMP exhibition proved to be very diverse this year even more so than last year in terms of medium and styles. Upon visiting the gallery, I was amazed to see everything from dozens of neon sculptures to hundreds of compiled geometric drawings to even footprints in concrete. Garrett Zopfi's work really struck me the most because his work was composed of these intricately designed and brightly colored plaster sculptures. There was at least 50 or so of these tiny creatures that were laid out. What was even more interesting was his theory behind this display of public and interactive art. I read in his book that he wanted to design a piece that was inviting but at the same time would create a type of apprehension. Traditionally, in most exhibits, viewers are not permitted to touch any of the artworks. Garrett played off this idea by having both vibrantly painted sculptures and stark, black sculptures. In essence, all of his work is meant to be touched and played with, however, viewers will not know that and mostly would stay away from the darker objects. The darker colors communicate a type of age and with age comes a sense of value which then dissuades viewers from touching it so as to not damage the work. On the other hand, he created brightly colored, almost candy-coated sculptures which tempt the viewer to touch and even play with them. Yet funny enough, Garrett also hung a sign up telling viewers that they could touch the pieces yet the writing was ambiguous and almost had to be deciphered. In all, I really enjoyed Garrett's work because of his clever and ingenious idea behind it. Overall all of the SMP works held great strengths and were very different and diverse from one another which made this exhibition, in particular, very unique.
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