Kimberlee Mladinic, a senior at NEIU, presented her artwork in the upper gallery of NEIU’s Fine Arts Building. Mladinic’s exhibit, which began March 29 and ran until April 9, featured pieces from her series of paintings titled “Instructions,” as well as several past works. Mladinic’s work incorporates images of various popular personalities and characters, taking such disparate icons as Marilyn Monroe, “The Wizard of Oz’s” Tin Man, Miles Davis and, somewhat jarringly, the police sketch of Ted Kacynski, the Unabomber, and creating from them pieces that are poignant and pointed in their criticism. While the pieces in “Instructions/Past Works” vary in tone and theme, they present in-depth critiques on a variety of topics, ranging from Capitalism and consumerism to romantic relationships. “How to Use Chopsticks,” for example, uses the mundane and juxtaposes it with a nearly-gruesome depiction of a heart being pulled from the Tin Man’s chest. The incongruity in the subject matter forces the viewer to take pause and examine what’s really being said — this isn’t the Tin Man you’re expecting. Mladinic says that she often uses these familiar icons to represent people in her own life. “I assigned a real person from my own life to wear the mask of that particular fictional icon,” Mladinic explains. She places these fictional characters in real-life situations, and this makes the representation truer to the people she knows.
The Tin Man’s impromptu open-heart surgery isn’t the only unexpected surprise in the exhibit. In “How to Tie a Tie,” the piece that is perhaps most emblematic of Mladinic’s wry sense of humor and penchant for macabre twists, we are treated to a series of images of the Unabomber’s police sketch. The series features instructions for tying a man’s tie. The final phase of the instructions, “Bring down through knot in front and tighten up to collar (then kick chair out from under you)” hits the audience hard, and ties in several of the other free-floating images in the painting, from the scissors to the heap of Unabomber heads at the bottom of the piece. The whole scene evokes a hangman’s noose, or the cutting down of a suicide victim, without, in any way, departing from a very banal format. Mladinic explained that this piece, in particular, was inspired after she read Kaczynski’s manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future.” In his manifesto, Kaczynski condemned technology, corporations and consumerism. Mladinic found it humorous to incorporate Kaczynski’s police sketch into her instructions, “…Considering ties are commonly [worn] as… attire for business in corporate America.” Mladinic draws on these odd parallels throughout her exhibit. While the pieces themselves capture and comment upon larger realities, Mladinic worked hard to keep the focus on the “instructional” format. It was her way of highlighting the universality of these instructions — we find them in everything from IKEA furniture packages to boxes of Poptarts. “There are even instructions on how to wash your hands in every bathroom here at NEIU,” she said. Her favorite instructions, though, are for the more everyday tasks. “My personal favorites are the ones that are for the most obvious tasks, such as how to put on a condom, insert a tampon or use chopsticks.” These instructions, she says, are highly symbolic of the ways in which our culture is driven by consumerism: “They always have the exact same first and last step — ‘Rip open package’ and ‘throw away after use.’ I think that… we have trouble assigning value to anything due to the fact that we have the freedom to simply rip it open, use it and then throw it away.”
Mladinic appreciates the value of public exhibition of her work, viewing it as a forum for positive feedback and promotion of her work. It also encourages her to develop and produce new work, a process which can take anywhere from a few days to a week, depending, Mladinic says, on how many coffee and cigarette breaks she takes. Mladinic, who is double-majoring in Secondary Education and Studio Fine Art, cited the art department’s Dr. Sieger and Mark McKernin, as well as her friend Lauren Harrington, as being crucial to the development and creation of “Instructions/Past Works.”
While her work is no longer being displayed in the Fine Arts building’s upper gallery, Mladinic’s work is on permanent display at the Underground Wonder Bar, which is located at 10 E. Walton St. in Chicago. To find out more about Mladinic and her work, go to http://kimberleemladinic.com.