{"id":82592,"date":"2024-06-24T10:03:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T17:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=82592"},"modified":"2024-07-01T07:58:07","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T14:58:07","slug":"marissa-albrechts-en-route-reflects-on-movement-and-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/marissa-albrechts-en-route-reflects-on-movement-and-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Marissa Albrecht’s “En Route” Reflects on Movement and Change"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gallery<\/a>

Gallery view of Marissa Albrecht’s ‘Lost in Transit’ and ‘Return to Sender’ installations, featuring road signs, packaging materials, and floor-placed photographs.<\/p><\/div>\n

Humanity is the species that travels, and paves our environment to expedite our journeys. When we aren\u2019t able, or don\u2019t want to go in person, we can transport just about anything to anywhere, and all this deliberate motion has resulted in whole industries that respond to the belief that nothing is where it belongs, and that it would probably be better someplace else.<\/h4>\n

Travel and transportation have been central themes of art at least since the Greeks carved a goddess alighting on the prow of a ship. Marissa Albrecht takes them for her subjects and builds her artistic triad on three recombinant forms: collage, assemblage and installation, all three of which are present in her exhibition at Finch Lane. She\u2019s not the first to take advantage of the linear character of the gallery’s rear space, with its blank wall along one long side and row of windows down the other. That said, \u201cLost in Transit,\u201d her mosaic of ten photos of packaging detritus, laid on the floor to match how they were found on the road, looks like a highway that connects her ongoing installation, \u201cReturn to Sender,\u201d to the 160 5\u201d x 7\u201d collages, each found on a package, that comprise \u201cExpress Delivery,\u201d at the other end.<\/h4>\n
\"Wall<\/a><\/div>\n

For Albrecht, an important characteristic of her art is that the audience has seen it all before. Those stylized flames, that cracked stemware, even the colorful, striped alert patterns, have been seen so often they cease to register … until she calls attention to them. Packaging elaborately engineered to do multiple tasks clutters the landfill, but the artist wants us to pause and, perhaps for the first time, contemplate just the one quality most likely to be overlooked: its beauty.<\/h4>\n

Nor is that too strong a term. Seen up close, the shattered corner of a yellow-and-black, painted plywood hieroglyph that signals \u201cMerge\u201d exposes a history and patina equal to that of a classical ruin. A stack of five-gallon paint lids resembles a rotor from some sophisticated machine. The figure on the Pedestrian Crossing sign, a diamond resting on one of its sides, engages in a Sisyphean climb towards unseen heights. We\u2019ve only begun the epic tale of \u201cLost in Transit.\u201d<\/h4>\n