University at Buffalo (UB)
April 5–April 28, 2012
Alexander Derwick, Anthony DiMezza, Luke Dougherty, David Leighty, Ruby Merritt, Byron Rich and Gary Sczerbaniewicz
The exhibition features the artwork of Alexander Derwick, Anthony DiMezza, Luke Dougherty, David Leighty, Ruby Merritt, Byron Rich and Gary Sczerbaniewicz. This dynamic exhibition will include a variety of mediums and styles including performance, printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography.
Alexander Derwick’s drawings and prints visually evoke mysterious narratives related to a group of children and young teens growing up on their own in a forest where they face crucial lessons about consumption and mortality with a sense of ill-informed debauchery. Derwick was raised in Olean, New York, and graduated with a BFA in Printmaking from SUNY Purchase. He has been a member of the print-based collective Tomahawks since 2008.
In conjunction with The 155th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment and The Union Volunteers Fife and Drum Corp, Anthony DiMezza will be directing a performance entitled Fág an Bealac!. DiMezza received his BFA in Sculpture from the State University of New York at New Paltz. His work explores the relationships between conflicting systems with an emphasis on varying forms of warfare.
Luke Dougherty experiments and looks for ways to make paintings, drawings, and etchings that are psychological, emotional, and critical. A realist painter working primarily in figuration, he has trained at the Water Street Atelier, The Art Students League, the State University of New York at Oneonta.
David Leighty was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and received a BFA in printmaking from The Ohio State University. Before moving to Buffalo, he had been living and working within the DIY community in and around Columbus, Ohio. David has won multiple awards and grants including the first-place prize at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum, and the Aida Cannaras Snow Fund Scholarship.
Scientific practices do not merely express Ruby Merritt’s work they forge and constitute it. The materials she experiments with a range from liquid solutions to pigments found from the earth. By allowing the chemistry of materials to do as they please, she explores natural phenomena of matter such as erosion, evaporation, solubility, and the forces of gravity. Merritt hails from Western New York and received her BFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Byron Rich earned a BFA from the University of Calgary where he researched multimedia art production. In his practice, he focuses upon environmentally based concepts, particularly the separation between our societal collective identity, and our biological reality.
Gary Sczerbaniewicz’s art practice explores interior architectural spaces as they relate both personally and culturally to memory, psychology, and history, whether real or imagined. He often designs his works to be experienced on an individual basis, which compels the viewer to adopt atypical modes of body orientation to bring them into direct sensory contact with materials and spaces. Gary Sczerbaniewicz received his BFA from Alfred in 1995. He received the 2012 Big Orbit Gallery Award and will have a solo show there in 2013.