Exploring Boston: On/Sincerity

On/Sincerity is a large, multifaceted exhibition (paint, sculpture,ceramic, installation art, audio/video...) currently running at BU's 808 Gallery. It's put on by BU's School of the Visual Arts. It's free and open to the public. (http://www.bu.edu/cfa/visual-arts/galleries/_808/)

The official guide says (somewhat turgidly) :

The theme of sincerity is approached through four fluid narratives to engage a few of the myriad readings of this commonplace yet enigmatic term: Artists who describe their collaborative processes and interactions with materials as both the means and the content of their work; artists whose work serves to build relationships and community through generosity and exchange; artists who employ their own bodies as expressions of intimacy, vulnerability, or the complexity of human relations; and artists who appropriate the manipulative visual languages of mass-media to create self-reflexive forms of communication.

It was a fun show. I only have a few photos, though.

This was perhaps the strangest: A young woman photographed herself crying, once a day, every day, for 365 days.  (Here, in an airplane lavatory.)

The full work was not on display (whew!); instead, only about a half dozen large-format prints were on display.

The most amusing art: A series of perfectly faked, authentic-looking antique telegrams --- whose message is a current, random Tweet.

Seeing something utterly totally vapid and banal like "I just bought a cantaloupe" presented in the portentous manner of a paper telegram does say something about communication reaching a new, lowest denominator.

Here's another:

There was interesting sculpture, too. Here, an artist took an actual cactus and its pot, and reduced the whole thing from 3D to 2D, sort of the way a Goode homolosine map projection "peels" the 3D earth to present in 2D format.

The 808 gallery is a huge room (it used to be a Cadillac showroom, years ago), so there's lots more than the above; including a dozen or so videos, an enormous installed-art piece; and some pieces that defy description.

Worth a stop; the free show runs through Dec 16.