It’s the little things in the Dalton Gallery’s All Small Redux
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
HEART OF GOLD: A still from Julie Puttgen's 'Voidvideo: Voidthrobber, 2007'
Honey, I shrunk the art.
When it came to art in the 20th century, bigger was better. All Small Redux at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, however, reconsiders the conundrum of scale by looking through the other end of the telescope. Nothing in All Small exceeds 6 inches in any dimension, or about a minute in length for video works. The hundreds of works by 47 artists range from itty bitty paintings to teeny tiny sculptures, from quickie videos to mini installations. All in all, the collected works demonstrate that big ideas can be packed into small spaces.
In Tom Zarrilli’s “Spectacles for Tourists,” the artist covers the lenses of four pairs of glasses with idealized images of exotic locations. The critique may be simple — that tourists see mostly what their brochures tell them to see, not what’s actually there — but the small scale and elegant execution fit the bill precisely.
Small works require a different way of looking. They invite close approaches, leaning in, squinting — exactly how such works are often made. The transfer of intimacy from the art maker to the art viewer is direct and powerful.
