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Exhibits mark new PhD program
“Horseplay”: Martin Kruck, Xcape #5, 2005, Photography/Digital Print, 20 x 36 inches Photo: UB ART GALLERIES
In celebration of the new Department of Visual Studies’ PhD program, the UB Art Galleries will present three student and faculty-related exhibitions.
All are free and open to the public.
“Visual Epistemologies: The Department of Visual Studies Faculty Exhibition” will be on view Sept. 8 through Oct. 22 in the UB Anderson Gallery.
An opening reception will be held from 7-9 p.m. Sept. 8 in the gallery, 1 Martha Jackson Place, off Englewood Avenue between Main Street and Kenmore Ave.
Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that grapples with how we come to know and understand the world. Likewise, art can offer new lenses for apprehending what we know and believe. “Visual Epistemologies” is a selection of recent, largely visually based productions that showcase the various research interests, artistic practices and craft skills of the diverse group of artists and educators that comprise the Department of Visual Studies’ studio faculty.
“Horsplay,” featuring artwork by alumni from the MFA program in the Department of Art—now the Department of Visual Studies—will be on exhibit Sept. 8 through Oct. 22 in the First Floor Gallery of the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
An opening reception will be held from 5-7 p.m. Sept. 8.
Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
“Horsplay” guest-curator Bill Maynes selected for the exhibition 12 artists whose work variously addresses irony; play; food, consumption and recycling technology; the inherent “false dialectic” regarding technology versus traditional methodology; and pictorial reference, symbolism, symbols and vector graphics.
“Throughout the exhibition, via an artificial GPS,” Maynes says, “we will visit the various islands of “Gulliver's Travels” in relation to specific artists in the exhibition: the floating island of Laputa (John Park, Kelly McFadden, Todd Mariani); the ever-warring Lilliput and Blefuscu (Mia Brownell, Paul Marcus); Houyhnhnms Land (Sarah Paul); etc.”
Moreover, the free combination of technological wizardry and traditional methods of drawing and collage used in William Kentridge’s haunting animations—refracted through his wide-ranging political lens—will play a large role in the exhibition, as will the crucial shift from abstraction to representation, Maynes adds.
A UB alumnus who double majored in theater and literature, Maynes is director of The Fields Sculpture Park at Art Omi in Ghent, New York, and founder of Bill Maynes Inc. (BMI), a company that produces documentary videotapes on artists, writers and historians.
The final exhibition, “Buffalo Beijing Translation,” will be on view Sept. 16 through Oct. 22 in the Second Floor Gallery of the UB Art Gallery.
The opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Sept. 16.
The exhibition is part of the New York Conference on Asian Studies 2011, being held in Buffalo Sept. 16-17 and sponsored by UB’s Asian Studies Program
The work on view in this exhibition was produced as part of the ongoing exchange program between UB MFA students and advanced students from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing.
UB students spent two weeks in residence in Beijing during the spring 2011 semester, resulting in a dynamic academic exchange and generation of collaborative artwork. Two weeks before the opening of the UB Art Gallery exhibition, students and faculty from CAFA will visit UB to continue working with their UB partners to finish their projects.
This exhibition will travel to Beijing at a later date for display at the Today Art Museum.
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