Niagara Falls Installation to Open in Art Gallery

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Niagara Falls, a site-specific installation by Adam Cvijanovic (pronounced Siv-ano-vich), opens in the University at Buffalo Art Gallery, located in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus, with a reception from 5:30-8 p.m. on March 23. An exhibition walkthrough with the artist and curator Sandra Firmin will begin at 5 p.m.

UB Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with extended hours on Thursday until 7 p.m. For information, call 645-6912. The installation, which is free and open to the public, will be on view through July 29.

New York City-based artist Adam Cvijanovic inaugurates the Lightwell Projects -- an annual series of site-specific installations in UB Art Gallery's three story Lightwell Gallery -- with a 35-foot-high, floor-to-ceiling painting of Niagara Falls that produces a spectacular interface between reality space and fantasy space. As with most of Cvijanovic's room-sized paintings, reminiscent of 19th-century panoramas in subject matter and scope, the sublime is integrated into spaces of aesthetic contemplation and tourism.

A self-taught painter born in Cambridge, Mass., Cvijanovic paints directly on Tyvek, a lightweight Dupont material employed in the construction of new homes. This extremely durable substance allows him to move the murals and reinstall them in different locations. His combination of latex house paint with acrylic generates a thick chalky surface that recalls the Renaissance frescoes of Piero della Francesca.

Cvijanovic has had solo shows at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Brockton Art Museum. He is represented by Bellwether Gallery.

The UB Art Gallery is funded by the UB College of Arts Sciences, the Visual Arts Building Fund, the Seymour H. Knox Foundation Fine Arts Fund and the Fine Arts Center Endowment.