Art Jam at PLATFORM
Last weekend’s kick off “Art Jam” event at PLATFORM, a giant South Williamsburg loft, was a fun and inspiring blend of artist practices. The two featured artists, musician Nathan McKee and visual artist Alison Kuo, collaborated on a handful of works creating an environment together full of colorful sounds and musical sights. Planned as an ongoing series where visual art and music “jam” together, each session will be held around a particular collaboration, giving the musician and artist pair free-range to produce work around their current practices, while pushing the boundaries of their respective mediums. Rather than trying to bring art into the music realm or vise versa, it’s an invitation instead for artists to exist without the labels of their practice by experimenting beyond their normal processes. This event was structured in two segments. In the first Alison’s varied works were installed around the space with specific sculptures accompanied by music which Nathan pre-recorded. Later, Nathan took to the stage and performed an hour long set of music, accompanied by video which Alison had prepared for his performance. Nathan’s music conjures a world of relentless idealism that might just hide a creepy underbelly. The music feels light-hearted with quiet poppy hooks. His gentle keyboards and his vocals drowning in syrupy reverb created a soft focus soundscape for contemplation. Alison’s work shares this feeling of walking into an alternate world no matter what medium she’s working in. She created collages, sculptures, and an installation for this show and all seemed to share a joy of strange objects and extremely bright colors. One piece seemed to consist of brightly colored plastic deserts laid out on a plastic table inches off the floor. In another a motorized panda sculpture sways to Nathan’s pre-recorded music. In her collages, jello molds soar through outerspace and merge with other strange environments. The work is whimsical, but Alison doesn’t aim to create a dream, per se. Instead she highlights the unexpected marvelous-ness that exists in Chinatown dollar stores where much of her raw materials (cheap curious, neon plastic, googly eyes) originate. It is in these often overlooked stores where where bright colors compensate for poor quality, that Alison seems to find her inspiration. The contrast of worldly items with the otherworldy impression of her finished works is somehow instinctively appropriate. Inspired by this unique loft under the JMZ train platform, the project feels like a natural use […]
