The Sensory Overload exhibit at the Milwaukee art museum tracks the development of kinetic and optical illusionary artwork, whose highly interactive and stimulating nature introduced new dimensions to the art world. The artwork in this exhibit moves chronologically, and includes pieces from the 1950's, all the way up to the 80's and 90's. These decades were arguably more experimental than any decades before, all across the board. Sensory Overload is a reflection of this experimenting that was going on, from an art perspective.  As our world becomes more and more consumed by technology, cell phones, computers, and televisions, many people seek the human hand in artwork, and crave it's pure sensations. As Frank Stella, a featured artist in this exhibit said, "What you see is what you see."

Walking into the space, the first piece that catches an eye is 'Ruin' by Nam June Paik. Ruin is a sculpture of assembled television sets from the 60's and 70's. Stacked almost to the ceiling, this piece has an ominous air about it, as if it's looming over viewers, sending out a warning, and forcing us to look. It wants us to act cautious, to think twice. The piece echoes Paik's belief that the television has defined the American landscape since World War Two. It seems to be asking, "What if the human race gets ravished and almost defeated by it's wars and all that is left are these TV sets and our crumbling monuments to our obsession with the media?" Colors and light flash chaotically on the TV screens, leaving us feeling deserted, and empty, wondering if we ourselves have too strong a fascination with our media and televisions. 

Turning the corner from 'Ruin', there is one of Al Reinhardt's 'Black Paintings'. Badly positioned on a wall near a window and a blinking neon sculpture, it is difficult not to pass Reinhardt's piece without really noticing or caring that it's even there, at first. But upon further observation, you begin to see why the poor placement choice of this piece is somewhat of a small tragedy. The point of Reinhardt's modernist 'Black Paintings' was to refine out all the unnecessary aspects of a typical piece of art, leaving behind a "breathless, timeless, styleless, lifeless, deathless, endless," piece of art. He would blacken his colorful paintings so much so that they became almost completely beyond apprehension. Sometimes it takes up to twenty minutes to see the actual 'face' of the painting seep through. It is usually Reinhardt's request that his painting be dimly lit, wanting his viewers to find light in the darkness, literally. So apart from being poorly placed in the exhibit, this piece is highly sensational and interactive, and an asset to the collection. 

Overall, Sensory Overload is a successful chronology of optical and kinetic artworks over the past fifty years. The pieces are interactive and fun, and have playful and mysterious effect on the audience. Even middle aged and elderly men and women feel like children in this exhibit, getting close to the works and figuring out what it is about them that makes them an 'overload' for the senses. However it's important to not completely lose objectivity when viewing this exhibit or any exhibit or artworks elsewhere, and that's why pieces like Nam June Paik's 'Ruin' and Ad Reinhardt's 'Black Painting' fit in well with the other pieces. They keep us thinking and keep us not just aesthetically entertained, but cognitively pleased as well.  

Eva Hesse, German-born, American sculptor, painter, and interdisciplinary visual artist, was perhaps most well known for her use of latex, plastics, and fiberglass in her artwork long before these materials were popular on the art scene. She also became an important artist historically, because of her position as a Jewish woman making art in the 1950's and 60's in America, who also was working in a very abstract to non-representational way, which art critics of the time may not have been expecting. What draws me most to Hesse's work, is her concern with the intellectual and philosophical aspects of creation. She says of her work, "When I work, it's only the abstract qualities that I'm working with, which is to say the material, the form it's going to take, the size, the scale, the positioning...for me it's a total image that has to do with me and life." Her works are aesthetically beautiful and brilliant, though not in a traditional way. The works make you question yourself and your ideas, asking you to look again, to come closer, to put words to what you see and to relate to them, and essentially Hesse, on a uniquely personal level. 

Hesse had a take on art making that I can easily relate to. Her materials were often found materials, whatever was lying around at the textile factory she worked at, and her process playful and imaginative. She also focused much on titles of her work, and often kept a thesaurus nearby to search out the right words and titles for her creations. In looking at her artworks, certain words come to mind, and the conversation and vocabulary that can emerge is as interesting as the pieces you are seeing themselves. Often Hesse would say things like she was trying to create 'non-art' and if something was too obviously beautiful, she would re-do it, as she did for her piece 'Repition Nineteen 3'. In my art I often find myself also searching for beauty that is not immediately eye catching, not blatantly obvious to viewers. I think Hesse wanted people to see her works and have to think about them, think about their own lives, and her life, and life in general and all it's eccentricities to actually see the beauty in her pieces. It takes a special kind of person to see beauty in the chaos, and I believe Hesse monopolized this idea in the works she made for the time period she lived in.     

Some of Hesse's works are ominous, some imposing and strange, some chaotic, and at the same time most are fragile and delicate. Experiencing her mother's death at age ten, being in a difficult place with her jewish heritage so close to the time of the holocaust, struggling to make it as a female artist in the 50's and 60's, going through divorce, and eventually learning to live with a fatal illness and dying from a brain tumor at age thirty four left Hesse with incredible insight to the fragility of life. Hesse's work  reminds us how something as vulnerable and at times tragic as human life, can be still eternally beautiful, and still, infinitely worth it.