Design media arts students put on rule-bending exhibit with mixed art forms

January 22, 2019

Breaking The Rules is an exhibition of work by undergraduate students in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts. The exhibition features a series of daring artworks that break from the mould of the conventional, explore the uncharted, and ask the unquestionable. These artworks don’t just break the rules, they reinvent them. The show is on view in the Broad Art Center through January 31, 2019.

Second-year Amy Fang and fourth-year Chris Kim, both design media arts students, co-lead curated the "Breaking the Rules" exhibition, which will show in the New Wight Gallery in the Broad Art Center beginning Thursday. (Niveda Tennety/Daily Bruin)

"A flyer encrypted with a Snapchat code can unlock dancing bears on your phone’s screen. Using augmented reality, the projectis one of the works that will be on display at the design media arts exhibition openingThursday.

The exhibition, titled “Breaking the Rules,” will showcase works from undergraduates in the design media arts program and consists of over 50 student projects. The exhibition will run through Feb. 1 in the New Wight Gallery in the Broad Art Center. This year’s theme, “Breaking the Rules,” is focused on work that transcends boundaries and limitations. Amy Fang, a second-year design media arts student and co-lead curator of the exhibition said the event pushed artists outside of their comfort zone by integrating new art forms.

“Design media arts as a major inherently is breaking a lot of rules. We do a lot of merging the digital with the physical and merging boundaries between design and art, which is sometimes seen as a distinct field,” Fang said. “There’s always these implicit unstated rules within each medium and we wanted people to step further beyond that.”

One boundary being stretched through the exhibition, for example, is that this year some of the pieces incorporated architectural models, Fang said, which is something normally done in the School of Arts and Architecture. However, she said design media arts has always been open to merging boundaries as the department’s philosophy is to synthesize and hybridize discourses and practices."— Umber Bhatti, Jan. 17, 2019

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.

Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.