As someone who tends to lean more towards the left side of the brain when viewing art (I love art museums but I always seem to want to contextualize the pieces within the time period/culture in which it was produced), I was really excited about Nicholas Carbonaro’s exhibit because it provided the opportunity to hear from the artist himself about the art we would be viewing. For me, this is one of the biggest pieces missing from art museums because for me art is a conversation. I’ve heard artists refuse to talk too much about their work because they want the viewer to come to their own conclusions. Now that is all well and good, and I certainly have no problems with artistic interpretation, but I think when you aren’t given ANY context, art becomes a one-sided conversation, which we all know is really boring. So for me, getting to look at some art and then engage with the artist about it is really ideal because it fills in that context.

My favorite series featured in the exhibit is the set of portraits done in ink. When I was looking at them before the Q&A, I wasn’t so enthused by them. Somebody asked why he seems to focus on the asymmetry of the human face, especially in regards to eyes, and he responded that the series was a set of portraits he did from memory of people he saw on the New York City subway (I was already hooked) and that the asymmetry is his way of expressing how the real world sees the real you. It speaks to the fact that nobody’s face is perfectly symmetrical, yes, but on a deeper level it speaks to the reality that life does not come with photoshop. You cannot control how the world sees you coming home after work or school on the subway in the same way that you can control how the world sees you through social media, a point that Mr. Carbonaro also brought up in answering this question. I, and anybody who has stumbled upon me napping in Uris, can definitely attest to this. But at the same time, while this idea certainly puts a damper on “classical” beauty (whatever that means), I don’t think it’s fair to say that this reality is a denial of beauty altogether. When you look at the portraits as people, when you try to imagine what they must look like “in real life”, beautiful is probably not the first word that comes to mind, but the creativity and style of art certainly is. And furthermore I contend that these portraits do not mock this perhaps at times ugly reality, but rather celebrate it as a part of life and the human condition. These portraits do not read as satire to me personally, but rather as a playful celebration of what it means to be and look human. I think it also reflects what I was mentioning before about art being a conversation and the relationship between context and interpretation. At the end of the day, there is always a limit to the control you have over how people see you. Even if you are constantly putting your best, most beautiful foot forward and every candid photo of you is Instagram worthy, people are still going to interpret that image differently. And this is not something to be afraid of or something to be seen as bad. That’s just how communication works.

What I appreciated most about Carbonaro’s art (and Carbonaro himself for that matter) was that everything about it was raw, real, and unapologetic. Even before I spoke to him and heard him talk about the exhibit briefly, you could tell that he was an artist who created visuals that spoke to him in whatever medium spoke to him. I loved how he encouraged everyone to seek creative outsets without inhibition and I am hoping that I will be able to make it to his workshop later this month. Of course he is a very talented artist who loves his craft, but he is in no way pretentious about it. What I got out of the reception was an idea of art for art’s sake, or perhaps even better, art for your own sake. Hopefully I can carry that inspiration with me for the rest of the semester!