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Three exhibitions to open in UB galleries
By KRISTIN E.M. RIEMER
Reporter Contributor
Three new exhibitions will open on April 20 in the UB Art Galleries.
"Welcome to the Promised Land," an exhibition of paintings and drawings by David Schirm, chair of the Department of Visual Studies—formerly the departments of Art and Art History—will open in the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m.
Composition 58, a 1958 lithograph by Dutch artist Karel Appel, is part of the exhibition "Karel Appel: The Color of Chaos" on view in the UB Anderson Gallery through June 25.
Opening receptions will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. in the UB Anderson Gallery for two exhibitions of work from the UB collection.
"Media Mixer: Sculpture from the Collection" highlights the UB sculpture and print collection. "Karel Appel: The Color of Chaos" features graphic work from the UB collection. These two exhibitions are part of a series of curatorial projects for the museum studies specialization in the master's degree program in art history.
All three exhibitions will be free of charge and open to the public.
"Welcome to the Promised Land" will be on view in the second-floor gallery of the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts through May 13. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with extended hours on Thursday until 7 p.m. Schirm's paintings and drawings stir religious themes and foibles together with miniatures from West and South Asia to address social, cultural and environmental issues. Allusions to environmental degradation, military doublespeak and cultural clashes are coded in highly saturated colors that create tension between political impact and beauty.
Schirm received an M.F.A. in painting from Indiana University in Bloomington after serving in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. He has received a variety of awards and grants, including the New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Drawing grant and Fulbright Fellowships in 1995 and 2004. Schirm's work has been exhibited widely, including at the Carnegie International, "Directions" at the Hirshhorn Museum in 1982 and "Painting and Sculpture Today" at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1980.
"Media Mixer: Sculpture from the Collection" will be on view in the second-floor atrium of the UB Anderson Gallery, One Martha Jackson Place near Englewood and Kenmore avenues, through Oct. 1. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
In 1960, the Martha Jackson Gallery organized the exhibition "New Forms—New Media," which was groundbreaking in its focus on the innovative new materials of the era. Returning to that same vision, the graduate seminar in the UB Museum Studies Program, led by instructor Holly E. Hughes, has brought together several works shown in "New Forms—New Media" that were donated to UB by Martha Jackson's son, David K. Anderson, with newer works in the UB collection.
"Media Mixer" explores the dynamic sensibilities of such artists as Claire Falkenstein, Mon Levinson, Lil Picard, Gio Pomodoro, Sam Richardson, Barbra Stanczak and Antoni T�pies, who were instrumental in the development of sculptural expression. The exhibition shows how these works reflect an aesthetic that is still relevant, while providing a new vantage point from which to examine them. From traditional materials, such as marble and wood, to innovative uses of Lucite and collage, these sculptures charge the space and relate with one another, not only as collective works of art, but as variant forms of manipulated media sharing the same space.
"Karel Appel: The Color of Chaos," the exhibition of graphic work from the UB collection, will be on view in the first-floor gallery through June 25. It will be accompanied by a brochure with an essay by museum studies intern Brooke Fitzpatrick.
A vibrant and colorful character himself, the expressionistic quality of Karel Appel's lithographs and prints denotes an enthusiasm for exploring subconscious stimuli. The UB exhibition demonstrates Appel's provoking study of the left-brain forces of creativity and their repression by the rationality of the right brain. His style has been described as "childlike," communicating a spontaneous approach as an attribute of children.
Appel's own psyche is shaped by myriad sources of inspiration. He was born in 1921 in Amsterdam, where Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Jean Dubuffet were among his first influences. Disillusioned with society after World War II and wanting to move away from Western art practices, Appel was a founding member of the CoBrA movement, whose controversial idealism is evident throughout his work.
In 1950, the artist moved to Paris, where he discovered a love for the dynamism of city life and where he received the UNESCO Prize at the Venice Biennale of 1954, preceded by various exhibitions of his work. It was here that he also met his longtime friend, art dealer and collector Martha Jackson and Jackson's son, David Anderson, who assembled the collection of prints shown in this exhibition.
Appel's fascination with cities drew him to the activity and havoc of New York three years later, where he became immersed in the jazz movement of the 1960s and was soon friendly with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. The artist attributes much of the energy of his own work to the inspiration he derives from the music.
Appel's work can be found in numerous private and public collections, including Tate Gallery, London; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Guggenheim Museum, New York City; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium; Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.