Art gallery

So today my class went to a local art gallery, where three local artists and one non-local artist were featured. Some of the paitings and drawings were quite boring and not my style, like, I could've done some of them with ease, but hey, art is art, if the one making it feels it's art, right?¨

Anyways! Of course, as always when you  go to  anything with your class, we were given a task to go with our little trip; we had to pick out an art piece we liked, and we had to analyze it.
I chose "Timelapse" by Olav Tokerud. He's one of the artists who's from here, and he was the one with most paintings at the gallery I believe. I don't really know when it was made, but I guess recently. Sooo, here we go, I guess;

Denotation;

I can see a lot of googly eyes - cartoon style- that forms some sort of pattern. I can see colourful teardrop shaped thingies, a couple of planets up in the right corner, randomized numbers up in the left corner and an umbrella/ribbon thingy thing in the middle of them. There's A LOT of galaxy like pattern everywhere, and fairydust like lines that go all across the painting. I can see a star below the planets, and a couple more stars up in the left corner.

When it comes to composition, the piece is painted on a rectangle-shaped, flat canvas. It has got strong, "popping" colours, with white and black details here and there. There's a lot of lines in it, too many to count actually, but the main lines - the ones that part the artpiece in different "areas"- has got to be the ghostly, white line that starts down in the left corner, and then moves out to all over the artpiece.

connotation;

For me, the piece talks about that time is all we've really got, and that we need to decide what to do with it ourselves, no matter how many eyes we've got staring at us. (I think the black drop-like lines in the middle of it looks like stairs or a road made out of googly cartoon eyes) I wonder if he was inspired by Tolkiens saying; "All we've got to decide, is what to do with the time that is given to us"....I think the galaxy background is there to illustrate how many choices we've got; that we've got an entire universe of choices to choose from. For me, the white lines represent a person, who don't know what to choose, people stare, and the person goes here and there, trying out new things, yet he/she can't decide. The clock is ticking, and he/she has got to make a choice, so it falls on the way straight up, 'cause thatæs where you can se a lot of other lines have already gone...I feel like it tells the story of a person who chose the normal, boring road that a lot of others have taken, yet there were rainbows on both of the other sides that the person could've chosen. (rainbow = exciting life, unusual choice)

My utlimate choice of what it says, is this; you can go the ordinary way, straight ahead, or you can dare to look for the rainbow sparks, and chose the way that's right for you - not care about that you're stared at, just think about you, and do not care about time - it's never too late before you decide that it is.

Whooa...I'm deep! I'm deep you guys....

My teachers wanted me to tell you about this article

http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/Er-vi-visuelle-analfabeter-6981119.html#.VQA6DPZBMuZ.facebook

This is a link to an article about the topic; "are we visually illiterate?" It talks about that we have got countless hours of language classes, but almost no classes about how to read and understand the images and pictures we surround ourselves with, every single day - and I get that. I see what they're trying to say.
Though the thing is; I find the art classes in the norwegian school extremely boring! Often it's the teacher, in my case, who's the boring one, or just plain mean actually.
And of course we learn to read and write more than we learn to see how an image is built up; everyone can see - it's a sense- but not everyone can read, none can without learning it! Reading is not a sense, we need to practise to know how to do it, but to look at a picture and get some sort of message out of it - all that takes, is eyes that work properly.

The article also says that it's easy to misunderstand images, if we don't know how to analyze them properly, but in my opinion, every person is different - every image is different - and every opinion and thought is different. No one will ever EVER understand anything in the exact same way; not books, not drawings, not poems, not articles - no nothing! I get that an image, like an art photography, has a specific meaning and so on, but hey, shouldn't ut be up to the one who looks at it, how they understand it?

Another point may be that we don't even get the chance to learn how to read images; but if you so badly want to learn it, then take classes, or even better; get yourself an education in it! Then you'll know how to read images like a badass!

My point is; I get what the article is saying, and I kind of agree, but I don't see at as a problem or that important really, just - if people would like to know, they can!