Art takes on the continuum

WHAT: “Space/Time” Opening
SPACE: MCAD Gallery, 2501 Stevens Ave. S.
TIME: Nov. 9, 6:30 p.m.
PRICE: Free

Two coordinates can uniquely map everything in the manifold of life. The Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s “Space/Time” exhibit specifies a point in space-time that can never be repeated and that no other labels will describe. That is, unless time is all just made-up hogwash, which seemed to be the opinion of many artists on display in this semester’s All School Project.
The project, which takes its inspiration from H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine, “ written more than 100 years ago (if you believe that time can really separate two objects), displays a wide variety of visual and aural interpretations of the interactions between space and time.
The walls of the “Space/Time” exhibit are packed densely (depending on how you measure space) with works that sprawl throughout three floors of gallery space. The most striking thing about the entries in this project is the huge variety of interpretation between the artists on a single theme — granted, it is a theme that has baffled physicists, philosophers and World Series umpires since conception.
Some chose to take a very technical approach, such as Michelle Brest’s “Potential Energy,” which calculates the amount of energy contained in a human body in terms of nuclear bombs. Others looked at the passage of time through other units such as in Megan Dolan’s “My Drive through Wisconsin,” which tracked time through photos, a digital clock and the narrative flow of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” Many of the pieces didn’t seem to address the issue of space/time in a very straightforward way, which is to say the exhibit had its fair share of alien and monster drawings.
One of the most intriguing pieces on display was Patrick Kispert’s “Past, Present, Future, Where Do You Live?” The piece is a simple wooden plaque adorned with a picture of a brain with the label “Time Machine.”
If time really is a conception of our mind, then the guest speaker at the gallery opening, Alan Lightman , would have the most developed sense of its illusive nature. Lightman is the author of an ethereal fiction collection entitled “Einstein’s Dreams,” in which each story portrays a different conception of time. Lightman will be speaking Monday about the similarities between his visions of time and their artistic representations.
If the discussion of space and time were to exist between scientists and artists, it would be in a room so dark and smoky that it would be impossible to tell the two apart. Dealing with such elusive concepts is something that requires vision even more than technical ability because at this point, metaphor is almost as important as logic. This makes the dialogue between science and art a particularly fruitful one.
Each viewer of the “Space/Time” exhibit will have the opportunity to vote for which work will receive the Viewer’s Choice Award. In some ways, the award is symbolic of our understanding of the nature of time, wherein an era’s understanding is almost as subjective as the rules of art itself.