PhenoMNal Twin Cities

photo courtesy of Artsmia

UPDATE:  Score 50% off tickets with this Living Social deal.  Perfect if you can’t make one of the free days.

Seeing is disbelieving at the new Minneapolis Institute of Arts exhibit More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness.

Over the past century, a period of unprecedented technological change and global social upheaval, once agreed-upon beliefs, or “truths,” have been cast into doubt, changing and shaping our understanding and experience of reality. More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness features work by 28 of today’s most accomplished and promising international artists, including Ai Weiwei, Vik Muniz and Thomas Demand, who explore our shifting experience of reality.

Exhibit runs March 21–June 9, 2013
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Regularly, tickets to this exhibit are $12 weekday/$14 weekend.  However, you can obtain FREE ADMISSION during Family Days on April 14 and May 12!  UPDATE: You can also receive free admission on May 18th if you photograph & share your visit on social media.

This new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts sounds very interesting.  It’s free to enjoy every day January 17, 2013-March 31, 2013 so why not check it out?

Minnesota artists David Bowen and Brett Smith use computer imaging and cinematic illusions to create dramatic shifts of scale in real and virtual environments. These artists are interested in how space can be both immersive and disorienting.

Bowen’s elaborate interactive installations are based on digital data gleaned from remote locations, translated into physical forms and movements. His hypnotically complex exhibition, “Underwater,” is at the bleeding edge of technology and interactive environments. An Xbox Kinect has been collecting data from the surface water of Lake Superior for months. This information has been fed into a complex motor-controlled grid structure that is suspended from the gallery ceiling. The grid will rise and fall, corresponding to the collected wave data. When visitors stand under the structure, they will see a fascinating contrast between the natural undulations of the waves and the mechanical movement of the aluminum rods and motors.

The title of Smith’s show, “Superimpostor,” could be the name of a comic-book or movie superhero; an inconspicuous worker by day becomes a crusader for good by night. This kind of superimposition, in which a person takes on two roles but struggles to keep them from overlapping, fascinates Smith; he wants to know how the facade is made and maintained. Smith has an encyclopedic knowledge of science-fiction special effects and hand-built cinematic sleights of hand used to create illusions on film before the widespread use of computer-generated special effects. Visitors will see expertly crafted scale models of seemingly familiar movie sets using mirrors to create expansive and deceptively realistic lunar landscapes.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis