Art as Social Commentary Video Tour
Channel: Gadsden Arts Center & Museum
Date: 2019-01-02

The Gadsden Arts Center & Museum hosted a trio of solo exhibitions centered on art as a catalyst for conversations about social change. In response to the social ills of the world, artists Mark Messersmith and Carrie Ann Baade have created bodies of work that challenge humanity’s impact, and relationship with, the environmental, sociological, economic, and social climate. In stark contrast to many contemporary artists who have distanced themselves from traditional, representational painting, Messersmith and Baade create richly detailed oil paintings that incorporate traditional techniques, iconography, and symbolism rooted in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque painting. MFA and BFA Students of Messersmith and Baade attending Florida State University are also exhibiting their own interpretations of art as social commentary in the Zoe Golloway Gallery. 

Mark Messersmith’s moody, chaotic landscapes feature crimes against the environment and indigenous cultures and evils specific to Florida and its unique ecosystems. His oil paintings contain a frenetic energy of flora and fauna mixed with logging trucks, oil refineries, and apocalyptic cityscapes. The artist came to Florida over 30 years ago and was struck by the constant tension of the state’s natural world butting heads with residential and commercial development. Messersmith came from the Midwest, where he says nature had all been paved over, leaving only a few squirrels and blue jays. Florida is a varied, beautiful, wild environment that has really only been inhabited by large numbers of people for 100-150 years. But in that time, the state has been striped almost bare of its natural resources, yet, as Messersmith tries to capture, the animals and plants of the area find a way to survive. The artist captures this never-ending conflict between man and nature using rich colors, dramatic light sources, and dizzying perspectives. Messersmith says he is capturing what is happening “just” beyond the suburbs and Walmart stores, the scenes of what is left of the natural world, with hints of encroaching developments.

His maximalist works are topped by pediments of carved wooden animals, harkening back to altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts of the High Renaissance. Situated along the bottom of each work is a predella, a row of individual boxes filled with figurines and objects that not only continue the narrative of that painting, but also tells a tale that begins with optimism and often ends in apocalypse. Much like the developers in Florida, Messersmith will sometimes encroach on the viewer’s physical space, attaching sculptures to the frame’s edges, and hanging carved wooden flowers, sticks, insects, and even life size dogs in front of the paintings. These attachments echo imagery in the painting, creating confusion as to what is real and what is an illusion. Each assemblage is a riot of color and imagery that pulls a viewer in to explore and decipher its many components. Messersmith’s work has a common theme of balance – what the artist defines as being midway between hope and despair as he explores the price for a misguided vision of a once-seeming inexhaustible natural world.

PRESENTED BY
Florida Humanities Council
FSU College of Medicine
Lifesong
Synovus
 
MEDIA PRESENTING SPONSOR
Twin City News
 
CONTRIBUTING SPONSOR
The Black Fig
 
Funding for this program was provided through a grant from the Florida Humanities Council with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the Florida Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More information: https://gadsdenarts.org/exhibitions/Messersmith2018