In the politically-charged atmosphere of the 2008 presidential election, the Weisman Art Museum presents Hindsight is Always 20/20, a solo exhibition featuring prints by artist R. Luke DuBois. The exhibition runs through Sunday, January 4, 2009 at the Weisman Art Museum.
Hindsight is Always 20/20 replaces The Old, Weird America, the exhibition originally scheduled to run during this time period at the Weisman.
DuBois’s 43 prints examine the history of American political discourse through the metaphor of vision. Drawing from the annual State of the Union (SOTU) addresses given by presidents to Congress, Hindsight presents each President’s SOTU addresses as a Snellen chart—the charts used by optometrists to test patients’ vision. Instead of the typical characters present in an eye chart, Hindsight employs words drawn from the SOTU addresses, presented in order of most frequent (top line) to least frequent (bottom line) word. The result is a startlingly clear snapshot of the lexicon of each presidency, containing a mix of historically topical keywords and rhetoric unique to each president and the time period in which he served.
Another version of Hindsight is Always 20/20—where the Snellen charts are presented as light boxes instead of prints—will be exhibited at the Denver Performing Arts Complex during the Democratic National Convention in August.
“This exhibition takes a penetrating look at how our presidents have addressed us over the centuries,” said Diane Mullin, associate curator at the Weisman Art Museum. “The work yields some surprising insights into the power of rhetoric in the political context. The Weisman hopes this ‘eye test’ will provide some insight into the current political race.”
R. Luke DuBois is a composer, performer, video artist, and programmer living in New York City. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University and teaches interactive sound and video performance at Columbia and at New York University. He has collaborated on interactive performance and installation work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Matthew Ritchie, Todd Reynolds, Bang on a Can, Engine27, and LEMUR. He is a co-author of Jitter, a software suite developed by Cycling’74 for real-time manipulation of matrix data. His music (with or without his band, the Freight Elevator Quartet), is available on Caipirinha/Sire, Cycling’74, and Cantaloupe music, and his artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City. -- www.weisman.umn.edu
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