Viewers take on the power of subjectivity

The new photography exhibit “Object-tivity” sits comfortably in the indentation that 3001 Gallery makes in the entrance hallway of the Graduate Fine Arts Building on 30th Street between Figueroa and Flower streets.

In the exhibit, 10 USC undergraduate students have stretched the medium of photography to incorporate methods of the Surrealist practice “exquisite corpse,” where one artist creates something and then others add more to it in turn. The end result is a collective effort that determines the finished product.

“As a starting point, each photographer created a list with a minimum of two objects they wanted to make a still life photograph with,” the exhibit’s literature reads “The class then added one object to each photographer’s list. This was done one-at-a-time and kept private from the group,”

The exhibit harkens back to the careers of Surrealist artists such as André Breton and Philippe Soupault, writers who would collaborate on pieces in a similar way to produce an interesting whole — for instance, their famous novel The Magnetic Fields. One needs to look no farther than Marcel Duchamp to see a similar precedent.

3001 Gallery presents a some photographs that immediately appear to be nonsensical to the eye, in that they blur the stability of still life beyond normal understanding. The photographs pair random, unrelated objects together, such as apples and clocks, shoes and straws, and chessboards with money.

The method used in this project lends itself to Abstract Expressionism, a form in which American art becomes increasingly infused with the process of creation, rather than just the finished product.

Artists such as Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning developed this aesthetic and found creative ways to add depth to the practice of art. Hence the almost-ridiculous rules and limitations placed on certain pieces, such as not lifting a paintbrush the whole time of creation.

“Object-tivity” is a descendant of this tradition. The 10 undergraduate students also blended media of collage and minimalism to make the display more dynamic, collaboratively working together to make the random objects come to life.

“In the exhibition each photograph is displayed next to the image whose list of objects the artist chose from. Thus an object only pictured in the mind becomes subjectively utilized in various forms throughout the show,” one display at the exhibit reads.

These practices allow the spectators’ minds to become the real focal point of the exhibit, as it is truly in the eyes of the beholder. This sort of approach makes subjectivity the best thing about the art, indulging in the axiom that there is no objective factor of anything in creativity.

Rather than imposing a strong, graphic meaning or message in the photographs, the artists allow each visitor to have his own experience with what the pieces mean.

This makes the exhibition’s title pretty ironic, playing off the face of the photographs’ objects and the fact that there is nothing objective about them at all. The students have made simple, factual objects into the opposites of their definitions. Fruit and sand serve as artistic devices in light of their own simplicity and commonality.

The exhibition started on Nov. 12 and will last until Dec. 2, when there will be a closing reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The gallery itself seems to be buried in the urban jungle of University Park. It sits next to an auto shop past Chanos, across the street from Carl’s Jr.

It only seems like an art building once you see grungy, cigarette-smoking 20-somethings leaving with poster boards tucked under their arms. Peering through the glass into the building, one sees and almost smells art supplies.

But this distinct and somewhat secretive placement makes the gallery seem that much more charming and “urban.”

The gallery itself is surrounded by “objects” that have become facts of USC culture, the restaurants and bus stops. It brings a new perspective to how one should view the objectivity of the things seen once exiting the building.

What is the experience of life if not a grand series of subjective thoughts and emotions based on things observed? This is “Object-tivity’s” greatest triumph (in debt to the Surrealists and all the others) — the mirror of the fragmented and surreal nature of reality.