Art gallery

From Candypedia
Art gallery
First appearanceCritical Hit, page 1
September 12, 2013
Related charactersMike, Paulo, Daisy, Sue, Amaya, David, Abbey

Art gallery is the public gallery that Sue, Paulo and the rest of their sophomore friend group visit in Critical Hit. Each student has to choose a work of art and write a research essay about it. The gallery has two storeys, with sculpture rooms on the free ground floor and a paid special exhibition of paintings upstairs.

Description

The ground floor is a series of connected rooms with pale cream walls, wooden floors and windows looking out onto greenery.[1] The rooms sit close enough together that voices carry from one to the next, as Sue is quick to remind the boys.[2] A wooden staircase leads up to the special exhibition, with a suited employee taking tickets at its foot beside a wall sign reading “Post-Impressionist Illusions”.[3] Sue also mentions a main desk, though it is never shown.[4] The group doesn’t have the place to themselves, either. A security guard keeps an eye on the ground floor while glancing at his phone, a woman nearby chats on hers, and several adult visitors browse one of the painting rooms.[4][5] Mike carries a tape-player audio guide around with him during the visit.[6][7]

Several ground-floor rooms contain sculptures. One piece is a chest-high cluster of sandy, hole-pocked oblong forms,[8] another is a dark-green ring on a labelled pedestal,[9] and a humanoid figure stands in a glass case.[10] One painting room also holds a person-height striped figure shaped like a Matryoshka doll.[5] Elsewhere there is an interactive installation with an upholstered couch, a red line on the floor that triggers an alarm when crossed, and a laptop running a program that simulates euthanasia. When David uses it, the program ends with the words “You are now dead.”[11][12] Small white labels accompany the artworks on both floors,[1][10][13] though Paulo finds the ring sculpture’s plaque no help at all.[6]

The upstairs exhibition has no visible windows and is lit by ceiling track lighting.[14][15] Framed paintings hang along the walls, and a freestanding partition divides the space.[14] One of the works is a large, completely black canvas mounted unframed on a yellow wall, with a small label and text panel beside it.[16]

History

A wide upstairs gallery hall, framed paintings lining warm-toned walls above the wooden floor.[17]

The class arrives with clipboards in Critical Hit, and each student is expected to choose a piece of art as the subject of a research essay.[1] David gets things off to a promising start by pretending to be a kaiju attacking the mound sculpture, nearly stomping on it.[8] The security guard soon comes over to ask whether he will have to remove the group.[4]

Paulo and David claim the green ring sculpture as the easiest essay ever, only to find that its plaque, in Paulo’s words, “tells me NOTHING!”[6] A tug-of-war over Mike’s tape-player audio guide sends it flying into the mound sculpture.[18][7] David then crosses the alarm line at the interactive installation[11] and “dies” in its euthanasia simulation, which Daisy finds fascinating.[12]

Mike, Sue, Amaya, Daisy and Abbey eventually pay to enter the special exhibition, leaving “the kids” behind on purpose.[3] David silently buys a ticket as well, stranding Paulo alone at the bottom of the stairs.[19] The ticket-taker stares him down, then juts his head toward Paulo and repeats his entire vocabulary: “Tickets.”[20] From the landing above, Paulo hears Sue and Mike making fun of him, and he buys a ticket after all.[20]

Upstairs, Paulo and Sue tear into each other in front of the paintings. Sue tells him he is so scatterbrained that nothing could hold his attention for long, then adds “Not even Lucy.”[21] She apologizes shortly afterward and admits that she does not really understand the art either, only that she wants to.[22] When Paulo challenges her to explain the completely black canvas, she cannot.[23] She leaves, and Paulo finally reads the pamphlet alone in front of the black canvas.[16]

Trivia

A large green torus sculpture rests on its pedestal against a pale gallery wall, another patron’s legs visible beside it.[24]
  • Veronica’s commentary says the simulated-euthanasia installation was inspired by one she and Oliver saw at the Museum of Old and New Art, itself based on a real device briefly used in Australia.[12]
  • The painting Paulo picks apart during the argument is the same one Sue critiqued a page earlier. Veronica regrets that Sue’s head hid it from view, which made the connection much harder to spot than she intended.[25]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 3
  2. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 4
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 13
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 2
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 12
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 6
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 8
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 1
  9. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 5
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 9
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 10
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 11
  13. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 17
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 16
  15. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 18
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 22
  17. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 16
  18. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 7
  19. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 14
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 15
  21. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 19
  22. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 20
  23. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 21
  24. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 5
  25. ↑ Chapter 79: Critical Hit, page 18
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