UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts to Present the Work of 12 MFA Students

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Tangential Reform, an exhibition of work by 12 first-year master of fine arts students from the Department of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo, will open on Feb. 288 with a reception from 5-7 p.m. in the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

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 716-645-6912. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will be on view in the second floor gallery through March 22.

Tangential Reform features the artwork of David Andree, Shelby A. Baron, Michael Beitz, Morgan Calhoon, Andrew Engl, Abigail Hendrickson, Nina Leo, Ryan Legassicke, Clayton Letourneau, Naomi Marine, David Munson, and Kara Newbauer. The dynamic exhibition will include a variety of mediums and styles including sculpture, printmaking, video, painting, drawing, sculpture and photography.

Andree, originally based in Minneapolis, Minn., studied painting and drawing abroad at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughn, Ireland, and received his bachelor of fine arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  Through quiet, subtle investigations in painting, drawing, print and collage, he explores cyclical processes such as growth and decay, weather systems or the shifting of seasons, as well as the relationships and relevance they have on all of our lives.

Baron received her bachelor's degree from The University of South Florida. She uses her pens and paintbrushes to diplomatically monitor, catalog and formally document both plasticized awareness and hypersensitivity to parody.

Beitz received a bachelor of fine arts in sculpture from Alfred University and trained as a fine woodworker with furniture artist Wendell Castle. His works reconstruct objects and forms, which playfully question everyday experience.

Calhoon, a Western New York native, studied abroad in Manchester, England, and received her bachelor of fine arts from Buffalo State College. She is a game designer who is exploring the effect of play on different types of social interactions.

Engl, a native of Buffalo, earned his bachelor of fine arts in painting from Buffalo State College.  His work investigates the concept of the individual as a synthesis of the finite and the infinite, and the implications thereof.

Hendrickson received her bachelor of fine arts in drawing/printmaking from SUNY Brockport in 2004. Her work focuses on re-contextualizing found imagery and objects to create a biographical narrative, primarily based on personal habits of obsessive collecting.

Leo is a Toronto-based installation artist working primarily in sculpture, drawing, sound and video. Her work explores the potential for estrangement from direct sensory interactions in contemporary environments and examines how such estrangement might redefine our experience, influence our sense of self and shape our sociopolitical perceptions.

Letourneau hails from Niagara Falls, Canada, where he received a bachelor of fine arts with honors from nearby Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario. His current studio practices are centered around ideas of identity and pseudonimity balanced by simulation and authenticity.

Legassicke's informal education began in Southern Ontario, culminating with a bachelor of fine arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary.  His work examines how imagery meets physicality and vice versa in relation to the process(es) of experience and description.

Newbauer, a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, received her bachelor of fine arts in painting in 2006. Her work focuses on the dialog between presence and absence, permanence and impermanence, transformation, and the intersection of living and working.

Marine is a native of Phoenix, Ariz., where she graduated magna cum laude from Arizona State University with a bachelor of fine arts in painting, and exhibited with eyelounge contemporary art space. Her work searches for experiences of a fantastical or uncanny nature present in the tangled web of existence utilizing the detritus of our consumer culture.

Munson holds a bachelor's degree in fine art from Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. He is a printmaker and draws on a traditional fine arts background. His work explores interconnections between politics, corporate culture and consumerism in the new "American Century."

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