• Skip to Content
  • Skip to Main Navigation
  • Skip to Search

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington IU Bloomington

Open Search
  • About
    • Areas
      • Architecture
      • Ceramics
      • Comprehensive Design
      • Digital Art
      • Fashion Design
      • Fibers
      • Graphic Design
      • Interior Design
      • Merchandising
      • Metalsmithing + Jewelry Design
      • Painting
      • Photography
      • Printmaking
      • Sculpture
    • Facilities
      • Virtual Tour
      • Fabrication Labs
      • FoA Bookshop
      • Museums + Libraries
    • Centers
      • Center for Innovative Merchandising
      • Center for Integrative Photographic Studies
      • ServeDesign Center
    • Accreditation
    • History
    • Careers/Opportunities
      • Part-time Position Descriptions
    • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
      • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan
      • Diversity Report
    • 2025 Strategic Plan
    • Emergency Preparedness
    • Staff Directory
    • Contact
  • Faculty
    • Leadership
    • Faculty Directory
    • Faculty Work
    • Faculty Research
  • Undergraduate
    • Majors
      • Comprehensive Design B.S.
      • Fashion Design B.A.
      • Interior Design B.S.
      • Merchandising B.S.
      • Studio Art B.A.
      • Studio Art B.F.A.
    • Minors
    • Creative Core
    • How to Apply
      • Direct Admission
      • Laptop Requirement
    • Scholarships + Financial Aid
    • Visit/Contact Us
  • Graduate
    • M.Arch (Architecture)
    • M.F.A. in Studio Art
    • M.S. in Apparel Merchandising
    • How to Apply
    • Graduate Student Funding
    • Schedule a Visit
  • Current Students
    • Career Preparation
    • Student Organizations
    • Student Resources
      • Academic Advising
      • Career Advising + Internships
        • Talk to a Career Advisor
      • Student Emergency Relief Fund
        • Eskenazi School Student Emergency Relief Fund Application
      • Applying to the B.F.A. Program
        • Studio Art B.F.A. Application
      • Scholarship Awards
        • Scholarship Application
      • Studio Art Thesis Exhibitions
      • Graduation
      • Eskenazi Ambassadors
    • Overseas Study Programs
  • Exhibitions
    • Grunwald Gallery
      • Exhibitions
      • Archive
        • 2022
        • 2021
        • 2020
        • 2019
        • 2018
        • 2017
        • 2016
        • 2015
        • 2014
        • 2013
        • 2012
      • Online Exhibitions
        • MFA / BFA Thesis Shows
        • Alumni Exhibition
    • Miller M.Arch Gallery
      • Exhibitions
      • Archive
    • Sage Collection
      • Exhibitions + Events
  • News
    • Vision Magazine 2021-22
    • Eskenazi School News
  • Events
    • Speaker Series
      • McKinney Visiting Artist Series
        • Archive
          • 2021–2022
          • 2020–2021
          • 2019–2020
          • 2018–2019
          • 2017–2018
          • 2016–2017
          • 2015–2016
          • 2021–2022
      • Miller M.Arch Lecture Series
        • Archive
          • 2021–2022
          • 2020–2021
          • 2019–2020
      • Design Speaker Series
      • Bill Blass
    • Special Events
  • Alumni + Giving
  • Connect

Eskenazi School
of Art, Architecture + Design

  • Home
  • About
    • Areas
    • Facilities
    • Centers
    • Accreditation
    • History
    • Careers/Opportunities
    • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
    • 2025 Strategic Plan
    • Emergency Preparedness
    • Staff Directory
    • Contact
  • Faculty
    • Leadership
    • Faculty Directory
    • Faculty Work
    • Faculty Research
  • Undergraduate
    • Majors
    • Minors
    • Creative Core
    • How to Apply
    • Scholarships + Financial Aid
    • Visit/Contact Us
  • Graduate
    • M.Arch (Architecture)
    • M.F.A. in Studio Art
    • M.S. in Apparel Merchandising
    • How to Apply
    • Graduate Student Funding
    • Schedule a Visit
  • Current Students
    • Career Preparation
    • Student Organizations
    • Student Resources
    • Overseas Study Programs
  • Exhibitions
    • Grunwald Gallery
    • Miller M.Arch Gallery
    • Sage Collection
  • News
    • Vision Magazine 2021-22
    • Eskenazi School News
  • Events
    • Speaker Series
    • Special Events
  • Search
  • Alumni + Giving
  • Connect
  • Home
  • News
  • 2019
  • Two Studio Art (Painting) M.F.A. alumni, Jordan Kornreich and Joseph Kameen, reviewed for work in Manifest Gallery show "DARK: Shadows, Nightscapes, and Darkness"

Two Studio Art (Painting) M.F.A. alumni, Jordan Kornreich and Joseph Kameen, reviewed for work in Manifest Gallery show "DARK: Shadows, Nightscapes, and Darkness"

Sunday, November 24, 2019

“Less Fun”, 2019, oil on canvas Joseph Kameen

Source: AEQAI

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”

A single sentence from Anne Frank encapsulates Manifest Gallery’s “DARK: Shadows, Nightscapes, and Darkness” exhibition.

From a pool of 359 works by 103 artists representing five countries, 30 states, and the District of Columbia, the blind jury selected 17 pieces by 15 artists. The artists’ brief was to “submit works, which address the theme of Dark, including any manner of interpretation, from literal to symbolic and philosophical.”

Jordan Kornreich

It doesn’t require pitting the ends of the spectrum against each other to make a statement. Jordan Kornreich exploits the middle using a luscious range of grays in his charcoal-on-paper Moving Again.

This quiet and elegant palette lends gravitas to a chaotic kitchen scene. The room is being packed up in a higgledy-piggledy fashion for yet another move. Some books have been pulled out of the bookshelf and are stacked on the floor, ignoring the empty box next to them ready to be filled. Arrayed on the floor are a basketball, dustpan and broom, a two-liter water bottle, a dish for the dog that almost didn’t make it into the composition, cut off as he is by the painting’s bottom edge. An open laptop sits on the counter; its glowing rectangular screen is “partnered” by a Windex bottle, making an odd couple. The glass cleaner is set on a draped cloth that, although elegantly draped, is just a rag. The idea of yet another move, that there is no permanence, recalls the 18th-century Dutch and Flemish vanitas paintings, which remind viewers of the brevity of life and the inevitability of death.

Joseph Kameen

Most of the works on view are tone poems expressed in a wide range of tints (with white added) and shades (with black) of black and white, noncolors. Less Fun by Joseph Kameen takes a different approach, one that is color-full. Kameen’s stylized kitchen is lit by an overhead fixture casting a conical light that functions like a spotlight and lightens only a sharply defined portion of the brilliantly colored domestic scene.

The room is dominated by a neon-orange table with a hole just off center with a golf flag the same color of the tabletop. The hole focuses a circle of light on the floor in the shadow of the rectangular table. An odd-looking fairway-green slide runs up from the floor to the center of the table. On the slide, which looks like a lolling tongue, is a neon-orange ball that may be sliding down or moving upward, propelled by a stroke by an insomniac golfer outside the painting.

Kameen contrasts the colors of the setting in light and in the dark. When lit, the striped wallpaper is coral and pink, but becomes two shades of army green when in shadow. The tile floor is coral and pink when illuminated, but eggplant and hunter green when not.

Less Fun stands out in an exhibition dominated by the noncolors of white and black. It is likely the least expected, but it may be the one that makes us think the most about what dark means.

 

  • Vision Magazine 2021-22
  • Eskenazi School News

Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design resources and social media channels

  • Faculty & Staff Intranet
  • COLLEGE OF ARTS + SCIENCES
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Indiana University

Accessibility | Privacy Notice | Copyright © 2023 The Trustees of Indiana University