by Amelia Hobson
The AEIVA galleries ceased to exist when I observed welcoming
rows of bright neon Cows in front of the Warhol: Fabricated
exhibit. Warhol smiled at a naïve me as I crossed the gallery threshold into an
aura of Silver Clouds.
The often mundane reality of schedules and responsibilities slipped away from
me in an exhilarating moment of liberating freedom as my visual imagination
embraced the bright colors, enigmatic images, and the lovingly shocking
attitudes of Warhol that we all secretly adore. Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon
personally invited me into the next space in their forms of wallpaper and Vote McGovern. The visually
fantastic leaped from corresponding walls in forms of myths, the fantastic
West, a harrowing Joseph Beuys, and an undeniably cool Mick Jagger. Marilyn
overlooked the room from her seat of immortal superficiality testifying to the
power of Pop and its favorite “Superstar” as I walked from regal purple walls
of fame into a contrasting room of dark black and enlivened red walls. I saw
electric chairs, riots, controversies of copy, and photographic evidence of the
unknown and dead that paved the way to Warholian fame. The exhibition challenged models of
the comfortably bland “white-cube” gallery in an excitingly refreshing way,
much like Warhol and his legacy still challenge the realms of art today. I
walked into the exhibit as an admittedly average student of the normal, but I
walked away as a visually inspired participant transposed into a swirling
revolution of authentically creative consumerism. Velvet Underground deep
tracks and, of course, David Bowie’s “Andy Warhol” playing in the background
was the only element missing in creating a total “Factory” submersion but I am
convinced that the Warhol exhibition evolution and dispersion of art has only
just begun.
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