The beauty of art is that anything can be significant. Urinals used as water fountains, multi-colored cubes in heaps, and newspapers papier mach?(c)d into a huge sculpture of nothing - even random shopping carts in Scajaquada Creek.
The Birchfield-Penney Art Center of Buffalo State College is featuring Julian Montague's project, "The Stray Shopping Cart Identification System," as part of their "24 Artists in 12 Months" series, better known as "24/12."
Also featured at the Center is Louis DeCarlo's exhibition, an intriguing series of photographs that utilizes human specimens and mostly miniscule props and backgrounds.
Through photography, Montague has portrayed a portion of the filth that can be found in Buffalo's waterways. With the addition of text and information graphics, Montague has organized a taxonomic guide to shopping carts gone astray.
After photographing and cataloguing thousands of shopping carts no longer in their designated locations, Montague explores the previously unsolved mystery of their travels through investigation and experimentation.
Each photograph insinuates Montague's alluring farce. He sometimes photographs carts that have been loaned out and submerges them into the murky banks of Scajaquada Creek. His project is made more sensational through his use of intricate vocabulary to describe this mundane and previously unexamined phenomenon.
Looking lonely and desolate, the shopping carts, with the use of cold greens and blues in the backgrounds, bring the photographs into the same color realm as Van Gogh's Blue Period while resembling monkeys entrapped at the zoo.
"I honestly can't tell if this exhibit is supposed to be taken as a joke or seriously," said Beth Elmerson, a student at Buffalo State. "If it is a serious take on shopping carts, I can see where the artist is coming from, from a waste management point of view. Who knew so many shopping carts were in the creek? Someone should clean them up."
Another photography exhibition at the Birchfield-Penney Friday evening emitted the subjects' emotion through facial expressions rather than cold colors and lonely shopping carts.
DeCarlo's photo series range from couples sitting on couches to swinging one another around on the dance floor. The obscure overhanging camera angles, the use of blank spaces through human placement and bright colors evoke strange emotions.
"I think the composition is great and there is something about the stark detail," said Larry Giffis, a professional sculptor from Buffalo. "It's not affecting or hurting me, but I can really see it. It sort of looks like paintings instead of photography."
The particular piece Giffis discussed is titled "End of the Bongo Club," a photograph with austere influence, the largest portion being stark white with a figure of a woman wedged on the right side.
"I like the imbalance. It's not too perfect," said Giffis.
Another piece included in DeCarlo's show was a photo of a woman looking off, smoking a cigarette with a man looking at her, seemingly entranced yet detached from the scene, titled "Mary Turns 50." In "Karine at the Bothy," a woman stands in a mossy cave with her arms up. All the colors are dark except for the woman's bright red boots and the spring green moss encasing the focal point of the piece.
Along the hallway outside Montague and DeCarlo's shows are the works by Joe Whalen in "A Life in the Arts."
With the use of acrylics on canvas and oils on paper, Whalen seems to bring a story to life with consecutive pieces that cover the same bar scene. Different people can be found hugging the bar, either alone or in a group in pieces titled "The Move," "Green Linoleum," and "Pool Player in Red Jacket."
The show at the Birchfield-Penney Art Center of Buffalo State College will be on view through May 10.
