‘Scene Shift’ opens at Fisher Museum
The gallery’s immersive exploration of scenic design is on display until April 6.
By FIONA FEINGOLD
Theatrical sets are one of few art pieces created with the nature of their destruction in mind; it’s difficult to think of another art form whose display is so impermanent. This begs the question of how one separates a set from its respective design process or the inspiration for a work from the act of its creation. Is it possible to appreciate the legacy of a piece while acknowledging the beauty of its transience?
“Scene Shift: The Exhibit,” which opened at the Fisher Museum on Friday, exists in these liminal spaces, inviting visitors to take a closer look at the process of scenic design.
Maureen Weiss and Sibyl Wickersheimer, who co-authored the namesake book “Scene Shift: U.S. Set Designers in Conversations,” curated the exhibit. Both Weiss and Wickersheimer teach set design as associate professors, Weiss at Los Angeles City College and Wickersheimer at the School of Dramatic Arts. The exhibit features work from a wide array of scenic designers, including Weiss and Wickersheimer.
Following the book’s publication, “Scene Shift: The Exhibit” was suggested by Bethany Montagano, the director of USC Museums. Although Montagano realized the potential of “Scene Shift” as an exhibition long before Weiss and Wickersheimer, both artists agree the exhibit was a necessary step in expanding its world.
“We were a little shocked by it as an idea, but actually, it’s what the book needed: to be three-dimensionalized,” Wickersheimer said.
Weiss found the exhibit provided the exact visualization she and Wickersheimer were hoping for after the book’s release.
“What we do is so visual,” Weiss said. “We knew that [the book] needed to have a visual with it.”
Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are greeted with black lines of text. Guests so entranced with the surrounding set pieces just might step over these sentences without a thought, but Weiss and Wickersheimer made the floors integral to the exhibit. The ground is peppered with quotes from the displayed artists — such as “What is the nature of the event we’re making? –Mimi Lien” — and includes striking ruminations on the design process like “It’s actually just a piece of scenery! – Colette Pollard.”
Shing Yin Khor’s background set in “The Gentle Oracle Bird” shows the intricacy of the design and actively engages visitors. Guests can directly interact within the exhibit and divine their fortune. (Henry Kofman / Daily Trojan)
These pithy excerpts encourage guests to carefully ponder the art they’re engaging with and, as in the case of certain installations, directly interacting with. (The exhibit’s final room features a divination game and a shelf of corresponding tarot cards.) Perhaps the displays are “just” pieces of scenery, but the foresight and care that went into their construction is evident.
One of the exhibit’s highlights is a display entitled “Navigating Boundaries,” a wooden shelf that features a variety of objects: books, props, paint and inspiration photos, among other miscellaneous items. The meticulous arrangement of such mundane goods alludes to the temporal nature of scenic design, the titular boundaries referring to material and timing constraints involved with the creative process.
After all, scenic designers spend thousands of hours planning, designing, constructing and perfecting a set — all the while potentially compromising their creative vision in order to meet the show’s budget, scale and venue. This lengthy endeavor culminates with the destruction of the designer’s hard work during a show’s “strike.” The installation asks readers, “Is there something important about how we alter a space and then let it go?”
Each scenic designer has their own perspective regarding their work’s impermanence. Deb O, whose designs are featured in both the exhibit and the book, prefers to disengage with her sets after a show closes.
“When I stopped going to strike, it was a lot better,” Deb O said. “They’re paying me to design, not to strike … The last time I see [the set] is on opening and it’s fabulous.”
Aside from “Navigating Boundaries,” “Scene Shift” displays a collection of collage-like, mishmashed pieces. Scenic designer Abigail DeVille aims to use set design as a vehicle for change, and her work displayed in “Scene Shift” is no exception. “Blur Horizon” is an amalgamation of repurposed objects that questions the unabated promotion of materialism in contemporary society.
The game design background of scenic designer Shing Yin Khor is realized in “The Gentle Oracle Bird.” The mixed media piece places a bird skull beside a pile of tarot cards and allows visitors to playfully divine their fortune before exiting the gallery.
The exhibit’s tour de force is the penultimate room. O’s awe-inducing design for the 2017 New York production of “(Not) Water” consists of a translucent tarp interwoven with fishline netting. The piece is elegantly strung together with recycled water bottles, touching on the play’s themes of climate change and sustainability.
Visitors are welcome to lie beneath the tarp — on a puffy red mat encircled by pool floaties — and stare at the projected images of water above them. The design itself had to be scaled down from its original form; its reproduction was a collaboration between O and USC students.
Above all, “Scene Shift” represents an ongoing conversation about scenic design’s curation, viewing and analysis as art. “Scene Shift: The Exhibit” brings the work of designers to the forefront of this ever-evolving conversation. The display sheds light on an often overlooked and underappreciated aspect of theater. In the words of Weiss herself: “This exhibit is our way of honoring our craft: set design.”
“Scene Shift” is on display until April 6 at the Fisher Museum. Weiss and Wickersheimer will be leading a guided walkthrough of the exhibit Feb. 27 at 1 p.m.
