The Jersey Bounce: A Relational Art Exhibit

Mary Birmingham, curator at the , recalls how a conceptual idea for displaying various works of art became one of the most unique exhibits in New Jersey.

"I had seen a show at MOMA called Rebus where the artist took works from the museum's collection and placed them in the gallery to create a narrative thread," Birmingham said. "I was taken with that idea of the placement of objects and making sequence. When you are a curator, a lot of times you get an idea and share it with a colleague and say, 'oh have you thought about this particular artist?' So I thought what if instead of starting with the art we started with the curator."

The expression of Birmingham's idea, her first exhibit for the Visual Arts Center in Summit, which runs through September 25, is called The Jersey Bounce." 

It's a collaborative effort among six female curators that features connections within art that link associative elements to other art in the exhibit, a concept that is "more about the conceptual idea of working collaboratively,"  Birmingham said. To pull the exhibit together, Birmingham solicited the input from fellow New Jersey curators to help create the associative connections from art located in other galleries or private collections.  

Starting with several key pieces of work, each participant had in turn chosen another work that responds to their choice in some way—formally (by composition, material, color, etc.), conceptually, or by subject matter. The sequential placement of these art objects in the gallery creates a narrative thread linking individual works to one another and forms a web of interesting connections. 

With a cornerstone piece from the Ann and Mel Schaffer Family Collection, Birmingham was able to create an 18-piece exhibit that uniquely tells a story of artistic element and concept association - a bounce of ideas across art.

From a work by Marlo Pascual, a cracked photo representation of a wine glass that is presented on the floor, led to a larger photo of wine to a piece called lucky penny tiles, also presented on the floor, by Ry Rocklen. 

Those associations are created throughout the room, but are most apparent in works that are to the left and right of any given piece of art in the exhibit. What is constant, perhaps, among all the works of art is the accumulation of repetitive forms such as penny tiles, collages of stickers and a lot of circular objects and patterns.

"My hope for the (exhibition) is that anyone who comes to it would find interesting objects to look at and hopefully (identify) some relationships themselves and if they want to know more, read more about it," Birmingham said.

For more information, call (908) 273-9121 or visit http://www.artcenternj.org

The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is located at 68 Elm St.

The center is open Mondays through Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. Fridays the center is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.