Mateo Tannatt, Studio Agony (Revisited), production still, 2014
In two 1849 essays, “Art and Revolution” and “The Artwork of the Future,” Richard Wagner formulates the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (adequately translated as “the complete art work”). The Gesamtkunstwerk was to consummate artistic production by integrating art’s different mediums according to their respective strengths.
While the marriage of Wagner’s vertiginous harmonies with his folkloric librettos and grand stagings remain, arguably, the greatest realizations of the Gesamtkunstwerk, contemporary currents in installation art have taken noteworthy strides in that direction.
Los Angeles-based artist Mateo Tannatt’s new installation at INOVA is a fine example. Engaging its viewer with video, painting, sculpture and architecture, Tannatt’s piece appeals to Wisconsin’s rural sensibilities by utilizing footage of livestock taken on a local farm. The installation plays with contrasts—nature’s oafish beasts and artificial special effects, abstraction and narrativity, different artistic media—and achieves a whole greater than the sum of its juxtaposed parts.
Tannatt’s installation opens on Friday, Jan. 30 with a reception from 6-8 p.m. INOVA is located at 2155 N. Prospect Ave. The installation is open to the public and there is no admission charge.
“Tactility”
Gallery 224
224 E. Main St., Port Washington
Given museums’ strict “No Touching!” policy, basing an exhibition on the theme of tactility—the quality of being perceptible by the sense of touch—may seem like mean-spirited temptation. “Tactility,” on display Jan. 30 to March 21 at Port Washington’s Gallery 224, is a celebration of our sense of touch as it pertains to surface, texture and artistic process. Exhibition curator and contributing artist Jamie Bertsch is perfectly poised to hold court on the theme. As a professor in UW-Milwaukee’s fibers department, Bertsch’s work both demands and is motivated by an “immeasurable reverence for the process of craft and the intimacy of using [her] hands as a tool.” “Tactility” opens with a reception on Friday, Jan. 30 from 5-7 p.m. Regular gallery hours are Saturdays from 9-3 p.m.
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“In The Realm of Innocents: an exhibition of mysticism and lore”
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts
839 S. Fifth St.
“In the Realm of Innocents” (Jan. 30-March 7) features local artists with works inspired by the great narratives, myths and religions of world culture. But this is no tired trotting out of the usual suspects: These works breathe new life into the familiar cast of characters. Gina Litherland’s Don Juan in the Underworld, for instance, evokes the mannered representation of the human figure in the painting of the Middle Ages, but is modernized by Don Juan’s jeans, white T-shirt and tattooed arms. There is an opening reception from 5-9 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 30.
