Artist Exhibit - DADA and Justin Quinn

During the first week of school, I was given a tour of the DADA exhibit in the Jot Travis by my German art history professor and one of my classmates. The DADA exhibit was truly meant for both artistic view and educational value as it served multiple purposes in the Jot Travis building. The middle exhibit helped to really make the exhibit educational yet inviting and interactive. There was a computer, plenty of books, wall pieces of articles discussing the history of Dada art, and a video that played with seats in front of it. The interactive quality of the exhibit was by far very well done, and I felt quite welcome in the space. Due to the welcoming atmosphere the middle room held, I also learned a great deal more about Dada art I had not know before since I read one or two books. The exhibit that by far took my attention the most though was Justin Quinn’s Not Everything Means Something gallery. I found it to be fascinating how Justin Quinn used typography and paper as his main art style and medium in the gallery. The piece that intrigued me the most was the piece on the left wall by the gallery entrance: a retelling of the story of Moby Dick using only the letter E. The pages and structure of the paragraphs were just like the original book. However, the structure changed more and more as pages went on until suddenly the Es were making shapes and forms on their own in the pages. As an artist interested in all fields, it was very astounding to see such a different form of art that I had only really seen one other time in a textbook. The gallery fit to the DADA theme as well. The words did not make sense and were very useless in conveying language. Still, Quinn used that to look into the form of language and give a simple letter in the alphabet another form. Overall, I was very highly impressed with the show that had been put on in the beginning of the semester. It was highly intriguing and very educational, but also feeded on a person’s curiosity and need for interactive qualities. Brett Van Hoesen, Justin Quinn, and all the students of the DADA exhibit did a wonderful job with their show, and I found myself going more than once to observe things I hadn’t focused much on the last time.