For most of last week, a very unique Stevens exhibition was open to the public in Jersey City.
It was hosted in a factory complex slightly outside of the denser parts of Jersey City, a structure of brick and glass surrounded by steel wire fencing with the air of an old textile mill. The ambiance shifted immediately upon entering, as visitors were greeted with a clean white lobby and various art pieces on the stairs and hallway walls leading to the exhibition. The “Come Close” exhibition was on the ground floor, and on display were the works of the eight senior Visual Arts and Technology students, Kelly McGowan,
Koby Garcia, Louis Farfan, SarahGrace Johnson, Jacob Stillman, Rebecca Sass, Ryan Carbone, and Sapna Gera.
The projects were scattered around the room, a professional looking scene with clean white walls and descriptions directly on top of the paint in small black lettering. In contrast to the heavily scientific and engineering-based senior design expositions typically seen at Stevens, the setup was more akin to an art gallery.
While all under the broad scope of Visual Arts and Technology, the works were extremely varied. McGowan’s project, titled Bedroom, was an immersive installation of a bedroom where all of the objects in the room were made of fabric. Visitors had to enter alone, wearing a pair of slippers, since “This experience is individual as to encourage the viewer to reflect on the things they feel and think about when they are alone in their own bedroom, and the vulnerability that comes with that solitude,” McGowan said. Embroidered in the fabric were words meant to evoke feelings of sadness, worry, regret, and fear.
Garcia’s project was a short film titled “The Story of Raphael and Riley.” A coming of age story set in West New York, the film places the viewer inside the heads of the two titular characters through meaningful dialogue, close up cinematography, and pacing. To emphasize the themes of the story, the installation was tucked in a shadowy corner of the exhibit and could only be watched by two people at a time as dictated by there only being two pairs of headphones. It featured student actors Paul Gurman as Raphael and Andrew Kinney as Riley.
Farfan created a visual novel titled “Ango” about the day-to-day thoughts of someone with extreme anxiety. The novel was set up on a computer, and consisted of a series of decisions the user needed to make. The decisions made directly affected how the anxious thoughts develop throughout the day, providing the experience of being inside a severely anxious person’s thought process.
As visitors approached Johnson’s display, they were greeted with a long black curtain extending from the ceiling to the floor. Once they parted it and stepped inside, they found a classical white bathtub filled with milky grey liquid. Projecting onto the surface of said liquid was a video playing on loop, the images of which undulated with the waves perforating across the fluid’s surface. It was titled “Give In,” and the video focused on washing away the masks we put on everyday.
Stillman’s exhibit was a series of compositions titled “Internal Dissonance” which “discusses the relationship between self-image and the inner battle that results from various social and personal experiences. Self-doubt and the inherent desire for the approval of others led way to the confusion of what it means to be an individual in today’s landscape. [The piece] depicts a variety of emotional expressions I’ve personally experienced throughout my years as a child and in school.” It was built in Cinema 4D and color graded in Adobe Photoshop.
Sass’s exhibit began as a peaceful dining room scene, with every component coated entirely in a spotless white. About half an hour after the exhibit formally opened, Sass began individually distributing eggs to visitors while only saying, “Please wait.” Without any sort of announcement or introduction, Sass then hurled a egg at the exhibit — it exploded in a flurry of black ink and egg yolk yellow. The visitors quickly followed suit, and soon the once perfect and unblemished scene was completely covered in debris.
Carbone’s piece, titled “Forgotten Memories” was a horror video game that discussed themes of isolation, fear, and doubt via environmental storytelling. “My goal was to have the viewer feel tension and unease through the specific arrangement of objects within a scene as well as the environment as a whole, making it an immersive experience. By using Lo-Fi graphic resolution, the environment was displayed similarly to late ’90s video games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill,” Carbone said.
Sapna Gera’s installation, placed in the center of the floor, was titled “Do you see what I see?” and consisted of 9 CRT TVs looping through coordinated hand-drawn animations. “The animations show the physicality of the feeling of anxiety, and prompts the viewer to reflect on their own physical experience with emotion,” Gera said.
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