Picking at the Corpse of 54 Oklahoma Artists in The Elaborate Collaborate

The Elaborate Collaborate

Opening Reception Friday 7/17

Closing Reception Friday 8/14

IAO Gallery

706 W. Sheridan

https://www.facebook.com/theelaboratecollaborate

Organizing 54 Oklahoma artists to participate in a sprawling multi-media collaboration is already an impressive show of strength, but there is much more to The Elaborate Collaborate. Curated by the tireless arts advocates, Kelsey Karper and Romy Owens, the exhibition opens this Friday as a fresh, conceptual take on the surrealist tradition with a delightfully macabre name, “the exquisite corpse.”

One part party game, two parts art exercise, variations on the exquisite corpse date back to the early twentieth century when artists wanted to know what incredible things would become possible when they were forced to explore far beyond their comfort zones.

Owens and Karper decided on three versions of the game for the Elaborate Collaborate.

“For the paper component, there are 42 artists and each got identical pieces of paper,” Karper said. “We marked each paper to show where one line should begin and another should end so it can lead to the next piece to create a continuous line throughout the panoramic work stretching across the gallery. Each artist did their initial drawings on their own, not knowing what the other artists were doing. We hung them and now the artists are welcome to come into the gallery anytime it is open to work on top of each other’s drawings.”

The Elaborate Collaborate is more than just a creative exercise, but a large-scale showcase of Oklahoma’s rich, diverse, and dense community of professional artists.

“This is a unique opportunity for the public to come in and see the artists at work in the gallery,” Karper said. “Anytime someone comes in, there could be one or more artists here working, which is not an experience you normally get in a gallery setting. If a piece sells, all the artists get an equal cut, so we are all in this together. Hopefully, that will mean that all the artists have an equal investment in the show.”

Michael Litzau and Ginnie Baer are two Guthrie artists participating in the event. Litzau contributed a geometric paper cutting that bumps up against Baer’s more abstract and free linework. Litzau admitted stealing a peek of Baer’s piece since they only work one room away.

“Mine was done before he started his.” Baer said. “I had to leave town so I didn’t know what he was going to do, though I did have a rough idea. I wanted to make a contour line drawing that would allow someone else plenty of space to collaborate on it. That was one of the biggest challenges. How much is too much? How much is not enough? Will people be able to add to it?”

Though most artists focused on illustration for the show, Litzau plans on continuing to do paper cutting as he embellishes on the pieces submitted by other artists. He doesn’t normally collaborate, so he views this as a unique opportunity to improvise amid someone else’s creative vision.

“That is the great thing about this project, I don’t have to feel weird or guilty about it,” Litzau said. “I can just cut out some figures or parts and reassemble then. It takes away my inhibitions about touching other people’s work.”

Since the exquisite corpse extended to other art forms within the surrealist movement, Owens and Karper wanted to bring in other media so a wider array of artists could participate. Kerri Shadid will be hosting a Poetry Game Night on July 30 to play with the game’s literary incarnations. Film also factored heavily into the surrealist movement, so a video component created for the exhibition will be projected throughout the month featuring ten filmmakers and one composer.

“You have ten seconds of what the artist ahead of you did and that is all you have to go on,” said filmmaker Sarah Hearn.  “I didn’t have any premeditated ideas of what I was going to do, but let those ten seconds guide where I would go with my minute. I was familiar with the exquisite corpse and approached it as a playful thing. I filmed a lot of footage and edited it together, so it wasn’t just a one minute sequence. I was hoping it would function on its own but also as part of the group.”

All artwork will be finished by the closing on August 14 when the individual pieces will go up for sale. Only $600 each—quite reasonable considering the paintings feature the fingerprints of as many as 42 of Oklahoma’s most exciting visual artists. A snapshot from a time when it was our turn to explore the outer reaches of what was possible in art.