One could argue that Newt Gingrich, more than any other contemporary politician, has shifted the dynamics of US politics in the 21st-century. After all, it was Gingrich who introduced the divisive rhetoric, vicious tactics, and nationalistic platforms that have come to shape the American sociopolitical environment for the last 30 years. Whether you agree with the policies or not, it’s undeniable that all Americans have witnessed the effects on Main Streets across the US. As we approach the midterm elections in 2022, we’re seeing an even more divided America; one in which the working-class and middle-class find it more difficult to make ends meet amongst high inflation and while on the brink of a recession. It’s these individuals that often become the subjects of Matt Bollinger’s drawings, paintings, and animations.

The artwork that comprises Double Shift spans the past 5 years and share a collective malaise that can be felt throughout each object in the exhibition. People go about their daily lives—filling a lawnmower with gas, smoking a cigarette, looking at a convenience store window— but with a palpable fatigue that exists when one is trying to hold onto a world slipping away. It’s easy to understand how the subjects got to this lonely place, especially with a global pandemic and a political system that operates in a zero-sum manner. Yet, Bollinger doesn’t try to make his work political; rather, taking stance more attune to an anthropologist whose documenting with empathy.

While trained as a painter, Bollinger’s studio practice is an interdisciplinary tour de force where narratives and characters seamlessly shift between media. Often focusing on domestic environments or individuals at work, his figures become metaphors for larger swaths of American society. Having been raised in a suburban neighborhood outside of Kansas City, Bollinger draws on familial history to help create allegories related to what’s happening around the country now. Bollinger’s use of extreme highlights and shadows create a noir-like quality that helps to spotlight an undercurrent of despair that’s camouflaged by daily routines. It’s these small moments of respite—a beer or smoke after a long shift—that remind us regardless of our socio-economic or political affiliation were more alike than different.

Marc Mitchell / Curator & Director of Exhibitions

LECTURE: Thursday, Nov 17th at 5:30pm / Hillside Auditorium

RECEPTION: Friday, Nov 18th from 5-7pm / FNAR Gallery

CATALOGUE AVAILABLE / Free to School of Art students

Corita Kent (1918-1986) was known for her innovative production techniques, teaching methods, and messages of social justice. Active in the U.S. during the turbulent mid-20th century, Corita’s body of work reflects concerns about poverty, racism, and war. Her use of bright colors and bold text was often combined with handwritten excerpts from religious works, philosophers, poets, and even pop music. Corita carefully selected words and images to deliver accessible, earnest messages about love, hope, and peace.

Corita was born Frances Elizabeth Kent in Fort Dodge, Iowa and raised mainly in Los Angeles, California. Coming from a large Catholic family, Corita followed two older siblings into religious life, joining the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles shortly after completing high school. As a professor and later chair of the art department at Immaculate Heart College, she helped influence its reputation and recognizable style.

Working primarily with serigraphy, or silkscreen printing, Corita wanted her work to “infiltrate the masses” and reach the largest audience possible. Often incorporating imagery from consumer packaging, popular media, and other everyday objects, her vibrant text-based compositions would become closely aligned with the Pop Art movement. During the 60s, her images would grow increasingly political, influenced by the decade’s transformative events. By 1968, her art was enormously popular, showing in over 230 exhibitions and held in public and private collections around the world. With this increased fame also came growing criticism from Cardinal MacIntyre, the conservative archdiocese of Los Angeles. Exhausted from this conflict and a frenetic schedule of exhibiting, teaching, and lecturing around the country, Corita sought dispensation from her vows and moved to Boston, Massachusetts at the age of 50.

Produced during this formative period, the exhibition presents Corita’s heroes and sheroes series – the most explicitly political body of work she produced in her lifetime. Made between 1968 and 1969, the twenty-nine prints not only respond to pressing issues such as the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and the civil rights and labor movements, they also highlight Corita’s acute awareness of how these events were framed and disseminated through mass media. Taken as a whole, the heroes and sheroes mark her striking progression as an artist and underscore the ethos that informed her life and work—a belief in the power of collective action and finding joy in the everyday.

January 20 - February 27, 2022

"The theme for the WHO's 1976 World Health Day was 'Foresight prevents blindness,' which laid emphasis on the preventative measures against blindness."

—World Health: The Magazine of the World Health Organization: Switzerland: WHO, 1976.

Foresight Prevents Blindness features a group of artists born in or connected to the region known as the Middle East. Geography is only one way of bringing these individuals together, but it's a convenient one. Each artist wrestles with fundamental challenges facing a region always under the scrutiny of the world’s lens. Whether addressing inequality, gender stereotypes, or the concept of identity, each artist presents a unique perspective gleaned from a life splintered by cultural history and geographical bias.

Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal explores the tension felt when occupying two cultural spaces: his current home in New York City and his birthplace, Najaf. Utilizing historical archives and expanded conversations related to a post-dictatorship world, Bilal highlights the realities of life under an authoritarian regime and the ongoing trauma of war.

Yasmine Nasser Diaz was born and raised in Chicago. Her parents immigrated from southern Yemen. As a multidisciplinary artist, Diaz explores the connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures. In works such as For Your Eyes Only, she juxtaposes disparate cultural references while weaving together threads of class, gender, religion, and family.

Amir H. Fallah, an Iranian-born American artist, works across painting, drawing, installation, and sculpture. Fallah highlights the complexities of belonging and otherness by employing elements from global ancestry: patterns, Persian miniatures, motifs from classic European painting, and American visual culture.

Alia Farid is a Kuwaiti–Puerto Rican visual artist creating videos and installations that give visibility to narratives obscured by hegemonic power. Even when filming an annual celebration—Nowruz Sayadeen (in English, Fisherman's New Year)—Farid presents a melancholic portrayal. Through his lens, the island where the celebration takes place feels seemingly cast out of time—attuned instead to ancient seasonal cycles.

Jordan Nassar, a Palestinian-American artist, creates work that addresses the intersection of craft, ethnicity, and the embedded notions of heritage and homeland. Treating traditional craft more as a medium than a topic, Nassar examines conflicting issues of identity and cultural participation by using geometric patterning adapted from symbols and motifs present in traditional Palestinian hand-embroidery.

Sheida Soleimani was born to political refugees who fled Iran in the mid-1980s. She situates her work in both art and political activism, building photographic tableaux that dramatize Middle Eastern geopolitics and satirize reporting from both the East and West. Sourcing imagery from popular media and adapting it within alternative scenarios, Soleimani’s work can easily relate to other art forms (Dada, relational aesthetics, identity politics) that emerged in other times of crisis.

Life Still

October 22 - December 3, 2021

Since early 2020, society has been living through what has been referred to as ‘unprecedented times.’ The global community continues to battle a pandemic that impacts all facets of daily life. Zoom became classrooms and workplaces, mask mandates and stay-at-home orders were issued for public safety, and everyone had to grapple with the abrupt disconnect from family and friends. Homes quickly morphed into both fortresses of refuge and the command centers for all aspects of our lives, which often involved countless days without physical contact with the world around us. To say Life Still is about the pandemic would be too broad, yet to declare it’s only about still-lives is too limiting. What resides at the core of the exhibition is each artist’s connection to solitude, creating space for looking, and the domestic.

Daniel Gordon creates large-format photographs comprised of elaborate hand-made sculptures that mimic objects from his house. When human interaction is limited, Gordon’s pictures act as sirens for a party awaiting the guests. The paintings and sculptures of Jay Lynn Gomez often focus on immigrant laborers hired by individuals to work inside and outside homes. Whether it’s lawn care or house cleaning, these individuals provide desired services while often remaining invisible to large swaths of society.

Sedrick and Letitia Huckaby create paintings, sculptures, and photographs tethered to specific places and people. Often utilizing their family as source material, each artist creates objects that embrace future generations while referencing the past. Whether a sculpture of a child in front of an elderly relative or a dress from an important event, these works talk about how culture lives within the walls of a home. Josephine Halvorson’s paintings document specific sites found on hikes around her home in western Massachusetts. Often created from observation and utilizing debris from the site, these artworks become monuments to overlooked scenes in the landscape. Since the 1940s, Ellsworth Kelly, who was best known for his significant abstract works, had a sustained practice of creating observational drawings from nature. To him, this was a way to keep connected to the world around him through detailed study.

Carrie Scheider’s photographs and videos often focus on personal relationships and the individuality of her subjects. Her work, regardless of medium, always captures psychological complexity and intimacy with an eye towards empathy and respect. The artwork of Lorna Simpson has a long history of addressing themes of representation, identity, race, gender, and history. By posing philosophical questions and considering who is not presented within her photographs, it allows viewers to make connections that relate to their own perceptions of the human experience and how these views may hold cultural trappings.

August 23 - October 3, 2021

Collective Interventions: On Past, Present and Future Topographics

Collective Interventions highlights underrepresented narratives using works across multiple mediums. The exhibition is a collaborative curatorial project devised by School of Art students meant to develop forms of pedagogical activism.

The artists come from many backgrounds and the curators see this collection of perspectives as giving vital voices autonomy over the historical, present, and future depiction of landscape. The exhibition is shaped by the convergence of intersectional perspectives on landscape––social, physical, and historical.

As you move through the gallery, the collective work introduces the themes of ownership, accessibility, and adaptability in concerns to these various perspectives of landscape. Collective Interventions represents these aforementioned themes in concept, form, and color so that the viewer and color so that the viewer may break down boundaries and preconceived notions of landscape to arrive at new understandings.

Artists included in the exhibition are Ariel René Jackson, Cristina Velásquez, Crystal Z. Campbell, Dannielle Bowman, Dionne Lee, Haley Greenfeather, Leah Schretenthaler, Mosie Romney, Nick Drain and Simphiwe Ndzube.

The exhibition was curated by Charles Krampah (MFA 2022), Kalyn Barnoski (MFA 2021), Miki Skak (MFA 2023), Sky Maggiore (MFA 2023), Tay Butler (MFA 2022), and Zora J Murff (Assistant Professor of Art, Photography).

“Floating,” adj. 1. buoyant or suspended in water or air; 2. not settled in a definite place; fluctuating or variable.

How does one remain buoyant or resilient in an unsettled or fluctuating world? Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” not only captured, but also actively participated in promoting the momentary pleasures of such a world in Edo Japan (1603–1868). Largely regarded as ephemera during their time, many of the prints, produced from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, were first collected outside of Japan. Depicting actors and beautiful women, the woodblock prints required the collaborative efforts of designers, carvers, printers, and publishers to produce multiples of exquisitely-colored prints that eventually littered the streets of early modern, urban Japan.

Similarly, the glass fishing floats on display here show a craftsmanship engaged to keep large commercial fishing nets from drifting away. Freed, these floats, on occasion, wash up on the shores of the Pacific coastline, but millions, presumably, are still afloat at sea. Some with netting still intact, these floats, made of recycled glass, have become sought-after beachcomber’s treasures, the largest ones especially rare. Nowadays, however, one can easily find decorative reproductions online or in tourist shops.

Staying Afloat in a Floating World is a ‘teaching exhibition’ where students from a cross-listed Art History and Asian Studies course on Japanese prints will conduct research on these works through the 2021 spring semester. We encourage visitors to the exhibition to return to the gallery and online for subsequent publications of the students’ findings about collecting practices, pertinent subject matter, production processes, and distinguished artistic styles – established ways of staying afloat.

-Oh Mee Lee, Guest Curator & Instructor of Art History

-Laurel Lamb, Guest Curator & Curator of Education and Engagement at the UARK Museum

-Students from ARHS 4993/5993 and AIST 390V, Exhibition Contributors

VOICES FOR CHANGE: The Color Network

October 30 - December 4, 2020

Panel Discussion: Thursday, December 3rd at 6:30pm (CST) via Zoom

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

– James Baldwin

Enraged by the senseless death of George Floyd, another Black person murdered unjustly at the hands of the police, a call to action has been ignited. This momentum has quickly grown into global outcry that Black Lives Matter. Concern over the lack of diversity in corporations, institutions, and organizations have prompted examination of hiring practices and charges of institutional racism. While people have finally addressed their solidarity with and support of racial equality, they have also watched as many in the corporate and academic worlds have stayed silent; their actions speaking volumes.

The Color Network is an organization of artists of color, whose mission is to aid in the advancement of people of color in the ceramics arts through development, networking, and mentorship. While maintaining current resources, including an artist database, the collective decided to produce a video to address what change looks like from the perspective of a BIPOC voice. The group wanted to help give actionable steps to institutions that are listening so they can have an idea where to start.

The exhibition is comprised of nine voices: Natalia Arbelaez (Interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator), Paul Briggs (Artist and Associate Professor at MassArt), Adam Chau (Artist and Museum Manager at Hudson Valley MoCA), Jennifer Ling Datchuk (Artist and Assistant Professor at Ceramics at Texas State University), April D. Felipe (Artist and community arts educator), Salvador Jiménez-Flores (Artist and Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Roberto Lugo (Artist, social activist, poet, and Professor at Temple University), Paul Andrew Wandless (Artist and social activist), and Yinka Orafidiya (Potter and socially-engaged artist).

The work presented in this exhibition speaks of racial identity in both overt and subversive ways; this coding of culture plays to many levels, including a window for the group it represents as well as to those who have no experience in marginalization. Addressing critical societal issues through art-making is a challenging task, as the artist must balance aesthetics, formal theory, historic precedent, and an independent voice. Intersectional theory asserts that people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression: their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other markers. The artist in this exhibition come from various backgrounds, ages, and ethnicities. All artists of color, they are active voices in their communities, eager to share their message. While their plights are different and they have faced their own obstacles while navigating the art world, they believe that when people speak up for each other their collective voices are stronger.

-The Color Network, Fall 2020

January 17 - February 23, 2020

Laleh Khorramian (b. Tehran, Iran) studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and received her undergraduate degree at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago; and her MFA at Columbia University, New York. Khorramian has exhibited internationally, including venues such as MASS MOCA, U.S.A; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Art Basel Statements, Switzerland; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Istanbul Museum of Art, Istanbul; The Sundance Film Festival, Utah; The Midnight Moment in Times Square, NYC; and The Queensland Art Gallery, Australia. In 2013, Bartleby and Co. (Brussels) published her first limited edition artist book titled, Include Amplified Toilet Water, housed in the collections of MoMA, NYC; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Columbia University, NYC; and the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels.

Khorramian’s practice incorporates the cosmological thinking of ancient cultures, their complex mythologies, and evocative spiritual vocabularies within her imagined worlds. In creating her work, she synthesizes these notions into “histories” that are both futuristic and ancient. Khorramian sees her studio practice as a series of experiments that embraces chance as a starting point for discovering possibilities of the unknown, whose details and outcomes she then investigates and reposition. In a vacillating process between macro and micro views of painted landscapes and incidental spaces, Khorramian integrates fiction within both spectacle and theater to explore the transience of living matter and beings and its cycles of depletion and plenitude.

Over the past decade, Khorramian’s work has spanned stop motion animation films, sound works, monoprints, drawings, painted landscapes, portraits, and collage. By removing cultural or historical specificity from her narratives, Khorramian uses the ordinary to portray the epic, universal, and transient. All while in a search for worlds just beyond the concrete material environment that surrounds us.

October 25 - December 8, 2019

Reception: Friday, October 25th from 5-7pm

“The world is filled to suffocating. Man has placed his token on every stone. Every word, every image, is leased and mortgaged. We know that a picture is but a space in which a variety of images, none of them original, blend and clash. A picture is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture. Similar to those eternal copyists Bouvard and Pechuchet, we indicate the profound ridiculousness that is precisely the truth of painting. We can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. Succeeding the painter, the plagiarist no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense encyclopedia from which he draws. The viewer is the tablet on which all the quotations that make up a painting are inscribed without any of them being lost. A painting’s meaning lies not in its origin, but in its destination. The birth of the viewer must be at the cost of the painter.”

-Sherrie Levine, ‘“Statement” [incorporating appropriated phrases from sources such as Roland Barthes’ essay “Death of the Author”], 1982.  Style (March 1982), 48.* 

Philosophers and critics have long debated the relationship of art, in all forms, to the images, technologies, and traditions that inform its creation.  This longstanding polemic was especially pronounced for much of the twentieth century. However, by the mid-to-late twentieth century scholars such as Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Douglas Crimp, Guy Debord, Isabelle Graw, Michael Newman, and Craig Owens would examine the reuse and recycling of pre-existing images. Each of these individuals produced a great amount of scholarship that investigates their unique and specific engagement with the philosophies of making and history. Artists working today continue their queries, plumbing the meaning and impact of appropriation, and of what Baudrillard called the “simulacrum,” or the copy for which there is no original. Even with the use of existing images occurring regularly, contemporary artists face new challenges that are still rooted in the unresolved histories and images that have proceeded them. 

The artists in the exhibition DECOY explore appropriation and, in so doing, link its complicated trajectory to the history of art making. Tauba Auerbach, who operates a traditional studio as well as a publishing entity called Diagonal Press, interweaves source material into objects that challenge traditional formats and interpretations. Trudy Benson’s abstract paintings present imagery that references early digital software such as Corel Painter to both question and celebrate the aesthetic. Known for her acknowledgement and use of commercially produced materials within her artwork, Tara Donovan exploits a viewer’s perception of item such as shattered glass or a Slinky© only to upend the understanding within the artwork. 

The sculptor Corin Hewitt creates work that is rooted in history, performance, and architecture. Working with a variety of materials, Hewitt recreates existing objects with the hope of soliciting an experience that questions what is real or a facsimile. The paintings of Jered Sprecher are unique in their ability to straddle both a digital and painterly aesthetic. Whether using a photograph of a bird or a figures reflection in a window, he splices traditional and newfangled techniques to create an artistic Ouroboros. It’s this notion of wholeness that lies at the center of DECOY; each artist has found unique ways to connect to the history of existing images or objects while still allowing for the ever-changing cultural landscape to present new and compelling hurdles.

* This special issue of Style doubled as the exhibition catalogue for Mannerism: A Theory of Culture, on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery, March 27–April 25, 1982.

August 26 - September 27, 2019

Reception: Thursday, August 29th from 5-7pm

In an interrogation room, two chairs face each other across a desk. At a birthday party, the guest of honor sits at the head of the table. In a museum, bench seating is placed at regular intervals in the center of a room. At a principal’s office, the student is instructed to “sit down.” On a stage, a comedian stands beside an empty stool. At an auction, everyone sits, save the auctioneer.

A seat is a frame and a proposition. A person sitting either subscribes to or rejects suggestion; their body gives in to the framework, or contradicts it- settles into an armrest or sits forward, lounges on a chaise or perches on edge.

When the functionality of the form is prioritized, a chair is more or less self-evident. A seat with four legs and a back can have an uncomplicated purpose. A folding chair provides the utilitarian uses of being portable stackable, and sit-able. An execution chair is constructed to suit its intention: remain stable, unbreakable, and provide constraints.

However when aesthetics and composition reign, a new function is served. The grandeur and adornment of a throne purposes to reflect the power of the sitter, the elegance and recline of the Eames proposes to embody a comfortable lifestyle. Here, the chair becomes a status symbol, the position of power or the privilege of leisure.

For the exhibition Sit-In, a cacophonous individuality arises. Vastly distinctive seats have been created, deconstructed, reconfigured and repurposed. Positioned in rows and facing a unified direction, a collective stance arises. Draped curtains provide the suggestion of a backdrop- a gesture of substantiation or revelation of artifice. Sit-in is a theatre of subversion and a revision of what we know.

Artist included in the exhibition: Sarah Braman, Jane Bustin, Nicole Cherubini, Liz Collins, Devon Dikeou, Francesca DiMattio, Barbara Gallucci, Kate Gilmore, Mary Heilmann, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Laleh Khorramian, Laurel Nakadate, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Nancy Shaver, Agathe Snow, and Kianja Strobert.

“Mother tongue” refers to an individual’s native language or an inherited form of communication associated with one’s origin. The term takes for granted that we consider both history and location when deciphering innate characteristics of dialect. However, it would be imprudent to simply think of language as speech; communication involves a myriad of ingredients such as social norms, the ways in which a body can express sentiment, and even the objects we keep. These elements become fragments that are then excavated to better comprehend relationships to the past, present, and future.

Language, in all its connotations, figures prominently in the art of Barb Smith (b. 1979 in Kokomo, IN). Smith communicates through both material and body. In the same way one acquires elocution, she studies how materials and objects interact with the human body. Aspects such as utility, scale, and form all start to play active roles within the work. Few things could be more human than deciphering and ascertaining meaning from the objects we make and encounter. The found and hand-crafted objects populating Smith’s visual universe, in turn, suggest an alphabet, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax all their own. The artist’s individualized languages are a catalyst for understanding memories and experiences with renewed clarity.

Smith’s systematic assessment of the meaning of objects is rooted in the Midwestern values in which she was raised. Like most things that are passed from generation to generation, she holds great appreciation for resourcefulness and the ways in which definitions can be multifaceted. Smith’s studio could be considered a giant “catch-all drawer,” the place where individuals store items that may serve a purpose later. She carefully collects objects that hold individualized meaning, but which can also be repurposed to express something new. By operating in this manner, her artwork can be simultaneously obscure yet welcoming, or small yet profound.

Like all artists, Smith’s language is unique to her history. However, these works purposefully leave space for viewers to connect with objects in their own personal and familiar ways. Each sculpture, photograph, or video carries a universal syntax that can be understood by those unfamiliar with her idiom.

Reception: Friday, December 7th from 5-7pm

One only needs to turn-on a digital device to recognize the importance of language. Each day our society is bombarded with words. We often accept as fact, and without deep consideration, messages transmitted via newspaper, smartphone, computer, or television. One could argue the dissemination of words has never been easier, or more immediate, than it is at present with social media. The prolific circulation of language creates a scenario in which semiotics and semantics become paramount in deciphering message and meaning alike.

Scholars of different stripes—from Umberto Eco to Noam Chomsky—have researched and published about the significance and implications of a written word within the cultural landscape. The details of these theories may differ, but they all take for granted language’s connectedness with mass culture. More than ever, cultural trends are reflected in the ways in which people converse. Items such as technology, political rhetoric, and popular culture all weave their way into colloquial language patterns.

Language As Medium focuses on seven artists who have consistently utilized text as their primary imagery and subject matter. In his prints, Mel Bochner uses well-known phrases or idioms to question how individuals receive and interpret linguistic meaning. The conceptual artist, Peter Downsbrough, creates work that turns conjunctions into iconographic signs that emphasize both written and physical space. By creating a neon work that highlights Donald Rumsfeld’s 2002 quote regarding ‘known known’s, unknown known’s, and known unknowns,” Alicia Eggert calls attention to the ways in which mere locution can alter and manipulate meaning. The text found in Dana Frankfort’s artwork is meant to be an esoteric entry into the language of painting. Rather than being understood as a word or phrase, fonts becomes markers for the ethereal nature of constructing a visual image.

As a pioneer of integrating text and media, Jenny Holzer presents cultural and political messages with subversive undertones. Her work seeks to confront the public and provoke thoughtful reflection on subjects such as gender, power, and consumerism. In her prints and installation work, Kay Rosen merges grammatical and typographical strategies to play with syntax and message. The video included in this exhibition, Blue Monday, delights in small modifications in meaning that are generated by linking systematic color shifts to days of the week. Often thinking of himself of a sculptor rather than a conceptual artist, Lawrence Weiner sees language as a material for construction. His work deftly negotiates aspects of typography such as font size, placement on a surface, and new letter forms to help viewers remember the phrase and its visual impact.

August 31 - October 7, 2018

Lecture: Thursday, August 30th at 5:30pm // Hillside Auditorium

Performance: Thursday, August 30th at 7:45pm // Chi Omega Amphitheater

Reception: Friday, August 31st from 5-7pm // Fine Arts Center Gallery

This exhibition responds to a tangle of geo-political events in recent Arkansas history.  These events linked presidents, CIA directors, narco-traffickers and mercenary adventurers while also drawing the lives of countless ordinary Americans into their vortex. A central node in this complex lays deep in the Ouchita National Forest, approximately 100 miles due south of the University campus, in sites allegedly used for covert military training, illicit political gain, and "a little excitement” (1).

While these clandestine events have never been a part of any official record, the people involved in them are slowly disappearing.  Some have been murdered, some have simply died, others have changed their names or used their positions of influence to shield themselves from consequences.

Until it reached into our lives and destroyed the tranquility that we had presents a series of gestures, each choreographed in response to a facet of this disintegrating history. The exhibition is comprised of sculptures—many of which were built using elemental materials such as earth and water retrieved from these sites---alongside texts, documents, films and performances. The intimacy of this method of creation presents a counterpoint to a diffused global network of disinformation, conspiracy and unknowability. 

Collaborators and contributors include filmmaker Eryka Dellenbach, NCAA athlete Austen Dalquist, builder Chris Lee, glass artist Joshua Stipe, and the University of Arkansas Library’s Special Collections. A publication documenting the development of the project and corresponding research will be available October 31, 2018. The publication was designed in collaboration with Ayham Ghraowi and Matt Wolff, with the support of the University of Arkansas Humanities Steering Committee.

 Michael Maizels / Curator

(1) Seal, B. (1985). Adler Berriman Seal Testimony. [Court Testimony] Special Collections University of Arkansas Libraries, Barry Seal Collection. Fayetteville.

January 22 - February 25, 2018

Lecture: Thursday, January 25th at 5:30pm, Hillside Auditorium

During times of unrest, it becomes increasingly important to have an artist such as Sara Greenberger Rafferty. Her work explores vexing themes with the direct purpose of calling attention to social disarray. Whether addressing issues of gender through the lens of comedy or the ways in which government monitors citizens via technology, she does so with a sensibility that is trenchant and undeniable.

In an era where lunacy is championed and the line between fact and fiction has never been blurrier, it takes a level of clarity and commitment to make meaningful headway within the social landscape. Rafferty has been unwavering in her cultural critiques over the past decade. Although her work is often incisive, perhaps it’s her use of humor that allows for the work to connect with so many viewers. As a result, she creates a space to confront topics that are culturally odious. By doing so, however, she steers critical conversations and prods our collective consciousness in productive directions.

With each passing day, there seems to be a new account of sexual misconduct, political embattlement, or police brutality. While some would argue that these items are unrelated, most individuals that believe that these topics are intertwined. Gender, race, and power have long formed a triumvirate in American culture, but the contested politics of the present day haven’t been seen since the protests for racial and gender equality of the1960s and 1970s. It is still unclear whether the current situation will generate lasting change, but it’s impossible to deny the public outrage and social impact.

November 6 - December 10, 2017

Reception: Friday, December 8th from 5-7pm

contra

preposition | con·tra |  \´kän-trə\

1.     : against —used chiefly in the phrase

2.     : in opposition or contrast to

 It has been more than 55 years since the critic and theorist, Clement Greenberg, wrote his seminal essay “Modernist Painting,” in which he casts forth several arguments in an attempt to “save” painting (and art). While Greenberg may have been using Modernism as a vehicle to argue for a more “pure” art, he was reluctant to connect the avant-garde with a rejection of the past. Greenberg’s unwillingness to commit might be seen as a recognition that, even when pushing the boundaries within a medium, there needs to an awareness of history. In doing so, he constructed an acknowledgement that both artist and medium are by-products of established traditions. Where, however, does that leave us in a Post-Modern, or even a Post-Medium, era?

Many cultural pundits such as Rosalind Krauss, Marshall McLuhan, and W.J.T Mitchell have discussed the relevance of ‘medium’ in various fields. While their verdicts may differ, they each acknowledge that both subject matter and social trends can’t be detached from medium. Instead, a case could be made that artwork is best understood in the context of something other than media and related formal considerations. This exhibition features six artists working freely across media and, frequently, defying traditional classifications. Each artist is engaged in different conceptual pursuits, yet they all find "purity" within their own practice. 

Kendell Carter is a conceptual artist that explores identity and social mores within visual culture. Whether he is utilizing shoelaces, graffiti tags, or famous furniture, Carter’s work explores the intersection of art and design. Nicole Cherubini is a ceramicist whose work pushes into the realm of both installation and painting, while still embracing the history of pottery. Her work champions traditional formats such as the vessel or relief sculpture, but also challenges the boundaries between craft and fine art. Mariah Robertson is a photographer who, paradoxically, works without a camera. While embracing traditional photographic material (photo paper, chemical developers, etc.), Robertson creates photographs that are often seen as doppelgängers for paintings.

Erin Shirreff deftly uses photography, sculpture, and video to interrogate the relationship between an object and it’s representation. For example, her lens-based work often explores the capacity to which a photograph or video can convey a sculptural experience. Jessica Stockholder utilizes a wide-range of seemingly mundane objects to create sculptural installations. Through the incorporation of materials culled from the everyday, she is able to address numerous artistic traditions including abstract expressionism, minimalism, and color field painting. Molly Zuckerman-Hartung is a writer and artist whose deep engagement with process, material, and paintings is undeniable. Yet her work evokes a punk spirit that constantly challenges the mainstream while clinging to painterly values. Regardless of the substrate, Zuckerman-Hartung explores what is possible when paint is employed with equal parts rigor and audacity.

A New Subjectivity: Figurative Painting after 2000, an exhibition composed entirely of paintings by women that attempts to categorize Expressionism in new terms. Referencing cartoons, fashion spreads, and personal narratives, the artists address the fragmentation of individual subjectivity in a technological world. The new figuration is thereby performative, rather than prescriptive, and both the absurd and sincere approaches alike are embraced as subject matter by the artists in the exhibition.

The exhibition features the following artists: Gina Beavers, Katherine Bernhardt, Katherine Bradford, Jackie Gendel, Liz Markus, and Rose Wylie. A New Subjectivity was organized in collaboration with Pratt Manhattan Gallery and curated by Jason Stopa – an artist, critic, and professor.

Following its time at the University of Arkansas, A New Subjectivity will travel to the Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, October 16 - December 15.

True Neutral Human explores the role of mistreatment or violence enacted on an object, an image, or an idea. By focusing on society’s relationship to cruelty, how we both enact and repair the damage we generate, Baldwin considers if cruelty can be applied and reconciled through the creative process. The work included in the exhibition simultaneously unifies disparate fragments while rejecting the whole in favor of particulate fractions. The result is an exhibition that embodies a dissonance between the physical, psychological, and historical.

Taylor Baldwin holds a MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and is an Assistant Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). His work has been shown at institutions such as Queens Museum of Art, NYC; Tuscan Museum of Art, Arizona; Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft, Louisville; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. He has been awarded residencies/fellowships at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Sculpture Center in New York. 

From top:

Taylor Baldwin, Motherfucker/Redeemer, 2013. Mixed media, 126 x 144 x 96 in.  / Courtesy of the artist

Taylor Baldwin, DETAIL- Motherfucker/Redeemer, 2013. Mixed media, 126 x 144 x 96 in.  / Courtesy of the artist

Taylor Baldwin, The Oracle, 2016. Mixed media, 96 x 36 x 436 in.  / Courtesy of the artist

Taylor Baldwin, DETAIL- The Oracle, 2016. Mixed media, 96 x 36 x 36 in.  / Courtesy of the artist

Taylor Baldwin, The Plague Year, 2014. Mixed media, 67 x 48 x 48 in.  / Courtesy of the artist

Taylor Baldwin, DETAIL- The Plague Year, 2014. Mixed media, 67 x 48 x 48 in.  / Courtesy of the artist

Taylor Baldwin, DETAIL - The Plague Year, 2014. Mixed media, 67 x 48 x 48 in.  / Courtesy of the artist

October 24 – December 4, 2016

It is difficult to mention the term, “narrative,” without acknowledging its wide use across academic fields ranging from psychology and literature to philosophy and visual art. Through the use of portraiture in storytelling, people have been able to document history, find cultural meaning, and explore personal beliefs. Moreover, in his 1980 essay, Secrets and Narrative Sequence, the British author and literary critic, Frank Kermode, maintained that stories have the unique ability to shift and develop with each interpretation. While one could argue that each artist in About Face channels Kermode’s hypothesis when developing artwork, it’s also apparent that the figure is the primary vehicle by which this message is conveyed. As such, the relationship between the intended subject matter and the continual reinterpretations bear witness to the possibilities found within the genre of narrative portraiture. 

Artists included in the exhibition are Philip Guston, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Rashid Johnson, Mary Reid Kelley, Arnold J. Kemp, Amy Pleasant, and Carrie Mae Weems.

From top:

Philip Guston, Sea, 1980. One color lithograph, Ed 50, 30 x 40 in. © Estate of Philip Guston / Courtesy of Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston

Trenton Doyle Hancock, Hot Coals in Soul, 2010. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 84 x 114 in. © Trenton Doyle Hancock Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, NY

Rashid Johnson, The New Negro Social and Athletic Club (Thurgood), 2008, Lambda print. © Rashid Johnson/Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth, NY. Collection of Darrell and Lisa Walker

Mary Reid Kelley, Swinburne’s Pasiphae, 2014. Video Still, © Mary Reid Kelley Courtesy of the artist and Fredericks & Freiser, NY

Arnold J. Kemp, Headless, 2015. Rubber latex, lemon peel, oil paint, welded steel, 46 ½ x 12 x 25 ¾ in. Courtesy of the artist and PDX Contemporary, Portland

Carrie Mae Weems, Mirror, Mirror, 1987-1988. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 in. © Carrie Mae Weems / Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery. Collection of Darrell and Lisa Walker

 Amy Pleasant, Head #4, 2015. Fired and painted clay, 10 ½ x 8 x 8 ¼ in. Courtesy of the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery, NY

A rose by any other name is still a rose…unless it’s a pipe. While Shakespeare implied that the name of a thing does not affect what it really is, René Magritte knew that context is important to identify the meaning of an object. With his 1929 painting The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe), he pointed out that, in fact, you can’t smoke a painting. It is just a representation. And while you can never smoke it, you can get the joke. The Treachery of Objects brings together eight artists working in a variety of mediums tied tenuously together by the material of clay. In each work in the exhibition, clay, with its mythic alchemical powers, holds the potential for both energy and action.

Artists include Brian Bress, William Cobbing, Jennifer Ling-Datchuk, Julia Haft-Candell, Brian R. Jones, Kristen Morgin, Michael Jones McKean and Thomas Müller. 

Brian Bress, Creative Ideas for Every Season, 2010. HD Video, 19:57 minutes. Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles

Kristen Morgin, Magritte McGrape, 2013. Unfired clay, paint, ink, marker, wire and roofing tacks. 11.5 x 4.5 x 5 in. Image credit: Kevin Todora

William Cobbing, The Kiss, 2004. Single channel video, 3:33 minutes. Image Credit: Peter White. Courtesy of Matt's Gallery, London

Julia Haft-Candell, Blob Being Hugged, 2015. Ceramic, silk, lentils, ink, Ikea LACK tabletops. 30 x 22 x 22 in. Image credit: Jeff McLane

Michael Jones McKean, Mass, 2015. Monocrystalline solar panels, epoxy clay. 65 x 65 x 2 in. Courtesy of Inman Gallery, Houston

Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Blue and White: Bold Beauty, 2014. Digital photograph, porcelain, blue and white pattern transfer from Jingdezhen, China. Three photos: 11 x 14 in. (each) and three sculptures: 8 x 4 x 1.5 in. (each). Image credit: Mark Menjivar

Thomas Muller, This is a Magical Space, 2015. Unfired clay. 44 x 44 x 12 in.

Brian R. Jones, I , 2013. Earthenware, plywood, acrylic, milk paint, and pencil. 18 x 18 x 3 in. 

November 3 - December 8, 2015

The American sports journalist and author, Robert Lipsyte, argued in his 1975 book, SportsWorld, that competitive athletics hold a unique position in our culture. One in which a game can offer an alternative world that can be viewed as sacred, as well as provide refuge. Even after forty years, the debate regarding the role of competitive sports continues within our society. Regardless of one's opinion on this topic, it is undeniable that many of our most prominent cultural symbols are linked to professional athletes or organizations. Any Given Sunday showcases a small group of artists who call attention to sports related imagery as a way to explore cultural topics such as the mass media, celebrity, race, and gender.

Artists included in the exhibition are Mark Bradford, Craig Drennen, Chie Fueki, Jason Stopa, Hank Willis Thomas, and Wendy White.

Hank Willis Thomas, Basketball and Chain, 2003. Digital c-print. 60x40 in. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, 

Wendy White, Brandi Chastain (Sports Bra Moment), 2014. Inkjet and acrylic on UV vinyl, wood, gold mylar frame, custom shaped and hand painted rug. Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo Gallery, Miami

Craig Dreenen, Ello Hello From, 2014. Oil and alykyd on paper, basketball, and pedestal. 62x40in./20x16x12 in. Courtesy of the artist and Samson Projects, Boston

Mark Bradford, Practice, 2003. DVD, 3 min duration. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Chie Fueki, The Nature of How We See, 2005. Acrylic on paper mounted on panel. 96x72 in. Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica

Jason Stopa, XXOO, 2015. Oil and enamel on canvas. 24x18in. Courtesy of the artist. 

August 24 – September 27, 2015 

The 2015 New Faculty Exhibition features the work of 7 recently appointed faculty members and reflects each artist’s academic specialty as well as their individual endeavors.

Faculty included: David Chioffi, Associate Professor of Graphic Design; Dylan DeWitt, Clinical Assistant Professor of Drawing; Sam King, Clinical Assistant Professor of Painting and Coordinator of Foundations; Marty Maxwell Lane, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design; Mathew McConnell, Assistant Professor of Ceramics; Marc Mitchell, Assistant Professor and Director of Exhibitions; and Sean Morrissey, Assistant Professor of Printmaking.

Sam King, Gem Asylum, 2015. Oil on canvas. 28 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist. 

Mathew McConnell, Selection from What It Means To Move, 2013. Earthenware, bone charcoal and graphite with wood and india ink. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist

Marc Mitchell, Random Access Memories, 2013-2014. Acrylic, spray paint, paint marker on panel. 27 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist

January 26 - February 20, 2015

Radcliffe Bailey: Storm at Sea considers themes of ancestry, race, and memory. Often working with found materials, Bailey deftly creates artwork that explores the relationship between past and present.  In his installation, Storm at Sea, Bailey utilizes objects such as piano keys, an African sculpture, and a glitter-covered ship to suggest leitmotifs associated with the black experience of the transatlantic slave trade. Keys, which are methodically arranged on the floor, create a engulfing visual experience that references waves of the ocean, splintered boards of a wrecked ship, and the bones of those slaves who lost their lives during the transatlantic journey. The result is an exhibition that questions the accuracy of recorded history through carefully culled objects and their connotations. 

Radcliffe Bailey, Storm at Sea, 2007. Piano keys, African sculpture, model boat, paper, acrylic, glitter, gold leaf. 212 x 213 in. © Radcliffe Bailey. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY

Radcliffe Bailey, Astro Curing, 2013. Georgia clay, black sand, and wood. 76 x 76 in. © Radcliffe Bailey. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY

Luscious: The Body Adorned addresses notions of beauty and adornment using the human body as a vehicle. Lauren Kalman utilizes metalsmithing as a prop for her performative photographs and videos. Deftly intertwining art and craft, Kalman’s work explores the complex relationship between body image, beauty, and consumer culture. Jon Eric Riis creates monumental tapestries that merge technical prowess with penetrating social commentary. While often featuring mythological, religious, or historical subjects, each tapestry contains culture information that is directly correlated to contemporary society. A common theme throughout Jill Wissmiller’s work is fixed desire. Often utilzing glitter-covered panels, Wissmiller's nontraditional cinema creates an environment where the spectator becomes obsessed with both the film narrative, as well as the material on which the image is projected. 

Lauren Kalman, Head Wear (Tongue Gilding), 2006. Inkjet print. 35 x 23 in. Courtesy of the artist

Jill Wissmiller, The Guilding of Lily (still), 2011. Projection on glitter covered panel. 96 x 96 in. Courtesy of the artist

Jon Eric Riis, Young Icarus (detail), 2013. Dipytych tapastery / woven silk and metallic thread. 34 x 78.5 in. (each). Courtesy of the artist

September 8 - October 24, 2014

Stationary Realms investigates issues of place, loss, and beauty through disparate views of the landscape. Each artist in the exhibition utilizes scale and weight to explore both visual and conceptual implications of depicting the environment: Jane Callister’s painterly landscapes deftly intertwine process and imagery; each painting celebrates a material investigation that generates fictional yet enchanting landscapes. Erin Harmon creates carefully orchestrated artworks that emphasize a systematic order that is then applied to her landscapes; like a terrarium, every facet is scrutinized to the point where it becomes synthetic. Jennifer Steinkamp’s video projections explore the relationship between actual and perceived space. Often focusing on trees and other natural phenomena, Steinkamp creates artworks that blur the line between observation and object. Known best for her installation work, Mary Temple considers the boundaries between fact and fiction. Often presenting the viewer with a shadow on the wall or the silhouette of a plant, Temple creates environments that straddle the line between documentation and fabrication.

Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Sebastian II, 2013. Wood veneer, shellac and oil on panel. 72 x 53 in. Courtesy of the James Cohan Gallery, NYC

Mary Temple, Light Describing A Room In Four Parts (part 1), 2006. Suite of four silkscreen prints. 18 x 22 in. (each). Courtesy of the Mixed Greens, NYC

Jennifer Steinkamp, Judy Crook, 2011-2014. Projected animation. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of the Lehmann Maupin, NYC

March 3 - February 4, 2014

Faith & the Devil is a large-scale installation which investigates the philosophical and existential conundrums of evil and underlying faith in the world. The source and lynchpin for this investigation is Big Gal Faith, an eight-foot tall female figure centered in the gallery. Her wild word hair and lavish twenty-six foot wide dress of drawn images and words express the main themes of the exhibit: cruelty and violence, lust, forgiveness, reflection, and transcendence. Dill has worked with these themes across a decade of large-scale projects and exhibitions including a year-long community & museum project in Winston-Salem, N.C. called Tongues on Fire: Visions and Ecstasy, 2000-2001, followed by another year long project for a Boulder museum exhibition called Interviews with the Contemplative Mind. In 2008 she conceived, produced, and directed an opera based on the language of Emily Dickinson, Divide Light, preformed in San Jose, CA. Most recently in New Orleans, fall 2010, at Arthur Roger Gallery Dill created an installation based on the life of Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street preacher, artist, and poet who worked in New Orleans during the sixties and seventies, called Hell Hell Hell/ Heaven Heaven Heaven: Encountering Sister Gertrude Morgan & Revelation. Dill states, “My theme of faith should in no way be mistaken for a kind of earnestness or naïve surrender. I believe the soul is huge, hungry and ravenous, and faith contains as much fear as optimism and crazy grace. I am drawn to explore these things, the big story.”

Leslie Dill, Faith and The Devil.  Courtesy of George Adams Gallery, NYC

January 21 - February 23, 2014

The Fine Arts Center Gallery is pleased to present work by new faculty, Stephanie Pierce and Cynthia Nourse Thompson. Professor Pierce teaches painting in the Department of Art. Professor Thompson is the Curator for the Fine Arts Center Gallery and teaches printmaking as well as Book Arts.

Pierce received her MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, BFA from The Art Institute of Boston, and she attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art. Sourcing common objects, Pierce’s perceptually based paintings reveal passages of change as light and viewpoints shift over time and the everyday resides in a state of flux. Her painting seeks an intersection between perception and abstraction using the phenomenon of light, space, and form as personal metaphor. Working from perception, Pierce wishes to convey a sense of the visual as it is unfolding into forms and space that are at once material and immaterial. The accumulation of observed moments stand as fragments of color, light, and location, as they change with the progression of each day. Her work is represented by Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects in New York and Alpha Gallery in Boston and has been exhibited nationally including The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Asheville Art Museum, NC; Space Gallery, Portland, and Art Chicago. In 2012 she was awarded an Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Her work is included in the collections of Joan and Roger Sonnabend, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Boston Public Library.

Thompson received her BFA in printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Thompson’s work contains strong religious undertones and has often been described as “Catholic” in nature and aesthetic— clean, pure, and ordered. At the same time, many of the surfaces and materials used in her work simulate flesh in order to evoke the body, an alluring and seductive association of great significance. Using the body as the site of personal investigation, the physical manifestations of denial, shame, and oppression are explored and moreover issues surrounding the female body are examined. In particular, Thompson shares her own experiences as a young woman raised in the religious South. She is interested in addressing her own concerns with beauty, desire, vulnerability and imperfection.Thompson previously served for twelve years as Professor of Book and Paper Arts at Memphis College of Art and the Chair of the Fine Arts Department for one year. Thompson was visiting faculty at University of Georgia’s study abroad program in Cortona, Italy teaching both papermaking and book arts as well as faculty at the prestigious Santa Reparata International School of Art teaching book arts and printmaking. In addition to teaching and curating, previously Thompson worked at Dieu Donne Papermill, Harlan & Weaver Intaglio, Inc. of NYC and the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, now the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions. In June of 2014, Thompson will be the Director for the Book Arts/Printmaking and MFA Studio Arts programs at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She will also serve as Associate Professor and teach within these programs.

September 9 – October 11, 2013

In Resplendent, the use of organic systems and visual sequences merge to explore the manner in which pattern may be realized. Delicate structures executed by each artist further investigate the relationship between material and image, while tantalizing the viewer with exquisite and often obsessive fabrication. Moreover, a landscape unique in the topography of material and form reveals a profound relationship with process— one that is both sensual and visceral.

The exhibition includes the following artists: Ben Butler, Beatriz Milhazes, Howard Paine, James Siena, and Susanna Starr.

James Siena, Upside Down Devil Variation, 2004 engraving, edition of 42 Published by Harlan & Weaver, Inc. Courtesy Harlan & Weaver, New York

Ben Butler, Furrow, Red and yellow cedar. 44 x 77 x 4 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Susanna Starr, Cherry Round, 2004. Hand-cut cherry veneer. 55 in. diameter. Courtesy of the artist.

November 7-December 13, 2012

Internationally renowned artist Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. Although she lived in New York from 1938 and until her death in 2010, much of her inspiration was derived from her early childhood in France. Using the body as a primary form, Bourgeois explored the full range of the human condition. From poetic drawings to room size installations, she was able to give her fears a physical form in order to exorcise them. Memories, sexuality, love and abandonment are the core of her complex body of work. Her work appears in collections worldwide, and in 2007 she was the subject of a major travelling retrospective organized by the Tate Modern in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

This exhibition celebrates a prime example of Louise Bourgeois’ innovative and ground breaking print work. Topiary, a portfolio comprised of nine large-scale copper plate etchings originally commissioned to benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art, graces the collections of the Tate Modern, London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Fine Arts Gallery is pleased to display this portfolio in its entirety. Bourgeois’ work has formed the flashpoint for a renewed interest in the field of printmaking, a renewed interest which has pushed traditional conceptions and boundaries, inspiring a new generation of artists to create prints.

As Bourgeois (1911-2010) herself once said, “…my work is suggestive, it is not explicit.” In this same spirit, the University of Arkansas Fine Arts Gallery presents this collection of prints as a tribute to what has been achieved, and suggestive of what potential lies ahead.

The Gallery wishes to acknowledge the Easton Foundation and The Louise Bourgeois Studio for the loan of this portfolio.

All images: Louise Bourgeois, TOPIARY, THE ART OF IMPROVING NATURE (details), 1998, Portfolio of nine copper plate etchings: drypoint and aquatint, 39 12" x 27 3/4". Collection The Easton Foundation, Photo: Christopher Burke, © Louise Bourgeois Trust / Licensed by VAGA, NY

Employing Voice, Embracing Agency is an exhibition honoring African American History Month. This exhibition is significantly comprised of influential contemporary African American artists from the collection of Darrell Walker. Mr. Walker [1969— ] is a former University of Arkansas basketball player and former NBA player for such teams as the Chicago Bulls. His collection contains many of the most important and influential present-day African American artists to-date. Moreover, Walker is bravely committed in expanding his catalogue with noted cutting-edge artists who address conceptions of history, culture, and identity in previously unforeseen lights laden with diversity. With each acquisition Walker is attracted to the manners in which the artist challenges the viewer in a recontextualized society. This pronounced collection is extensive and ranges from: the photographic imagery of Wardell Milan; the sculptural paintings of Radcliffe Bailey; and the powerful photographic imagery of Xaviera Simmons, among others. These holdings reference Walker’s cultural heritage and clearly illustrate his dedication to its preservation and further topical explorations. Moreover, Mr. Walker became an influential mentor to many, providing inspiration for the development of many other prominent collectors such as that of Elliot Perry. Additional loans included in the exhibition are works by Radcliffe Bailey, Michael Ray Charles, Willie Cole, and a video by renowned artist Kara Walker.

February will present a month of dynamic, interdisciplinary programming orchestrated for the university and the community-at-large. The African and African American Studies Department have been invited to collaborate in this programming as well as the Multicultural and Diversity Center— aligning the academic outcomes of our respective departments— Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, the Dean of Graduate Studies and founding Director of the Center of Race and Culture at Maryland Institute College of Art, will lecture on Thursday, February 7 at 6:00pm. Dr. Hammond has garnered such awards as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Studio Museum among many others and has curated numerous exhibitions including The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City which explored the impact of African visual culture on contemporary art, craft and design around the world.

Kara Walker, till from 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, Moving picture. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co, NYC

Xaviera Simmons, High Season Brown, 2004. Courtesy of David Castillo Gallery, Miami

Willie Cole, Silex Male: Ritual, Digital print on Epson 9600 using Ultra Chrome Archival Inks, edition of 12, 2004

October 23 - December 4, 2013

Resonance: Audible Silence in Portraiture, a visceral portrait of devotion and beauty, challenges viewers to confront the deepest of human emotions that reside within the panorama of mortality. Immersed in dissolution, a collection of international artists present a haunting visual dialogue which is strikingly raw and at the surface of our emotional armature. The penetrating presence of grief and loss compounded by images, which while beautiful are laden with sorrow, regret and transcendency, beckon the viewer to pause and reflect on the frailty of our own existence and the manner in which one acknowledges life and death, faith and beauty.

Artists included in the exhibition are Petah Coyne, Gail Deery, Anne-Karin Furunes, Portia Munson, and Bill Viola. Each artist distinctively addresses themes of vulnerability, bereavement and mortality. Although the artists in Resonance confront us with fearful depths lurking beneath our exterior, their images beckon us to fathom its darkness and arise to find strength, clarity and the recognition that without this palpable dimness light would not exist. Within silence there are moments of great beauty and certainty.

BILL VIOLA, Surrender, 2001, color video diptych on two plasma displays mounted vertically on wall, 80 2/5 x 24 x 3 1/2inches. Performers, John Fleck, Weba Garretson. Photo: Kira Perov

Anne-Karin Furunes, Portriats of Archive Pictures VII, 2011, Painted acrylic canvas, perforated. Courtesy Barry Friedman LTD, NYC

October 1 - November 4, 2012

The contemporary artist’s world is a dense plurality of options, framed in a similarly wide variety of contexts for viewing and interpretation. The discipline of painting is certainly no exception to this, even when applied to a genre as commonly known and accepted as the landscape. Some landscape painters convey reality in compellingly quotidian detail, reflecting or critiquing the complex relationship between humans and nature; others construct neo-byzantine visions of the future that may thrill or terrify; some work intuitively to give form to the ephemeral, conveying that which cannot be spoken; and many bend or break accepted rules of vision, reminding us that perception itself is both a privilege and a discipline. Tenses of Landscape, an exhibition comprised of nineteen contemporary landscape painters, presents both broad and dynamic depictions of landscape revealed as motif. Moreover, each artist examines the terrain dictated by these approaches and in turn addresses the act of painting itself.

The artists in this exhibition work in a variety of media— acrylic on wood, oil on canvas, and encaustic and collage on wood. Many have been featured on the website MW Capacity, mwcapacity.com, co-edited by Christopher Lowrance and Sam King. MW Capacity is known among painters and art enthusiasts as an online hub for exposure to and discussion about painting, particularly painting in the Midwest, although the artists selected for this exhibition reside in a wide variety of locations throughout the United States. Accompanying this exhibition, MW Capacity will feature an online publication in order to facilitate further thought and discussion among an extended audience. The exhibition appears on PAINTERS TABLE on line magazine and can be viewed at http://painters-table.com/blog/tenses-landscape#.UIAGVo7dJnU

Artists included in the exhibition are: Ricky Allman, Julie Cifuentes, Mike East, Emily Gherard, Grant Hottle, Michael Kareken, Tim Kennedy, Carla Knopp, Michael Krueger, Mark Lewis, Kristin Musgnug, Joseph Noderer, Margaret Noel, Casey Roberts, Claire Sherman, Kimberly Trowbridge, Shane Walsh, Megan Williamson, and Jenn Wilson.

Claire Sherman, Cave and Trees, 2011, oil on canvas, 96 x 78 inches (courtesy of the artist)

Emily Gherard, Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas, 32 x 30 inches courtesy of the artist)

Michael Karaken, Scrap Engines, 2009, oil on canvas, 84 x 96 inches (courtesy of the artist)

Michael Krueger, Mound City, 2012, colored pencil on paper (courtesy of the artist)

Ricky Allman, safe keeping, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches (courtesy of the artist)

October 8 - November 18, 2011

Mark Dion: Process and Inquiry features selections from several bodies of the world-renowned artist’s work, as well as related preparatory drawings, and works made in proposal of a public art piece for the University of Arkansas campus.

Mark Dion’s oeuvre has explored social, historical, and contemporary representations of nature, through collaborative models, group participation, and experiments of co-evolution. His projects illuminate histories of aesthetics and science, examining continuities and ruptures between past and present practices of knowing, ordering, and classifying the material world. With an artistic research process that regularly synthesizes visual and textual information from journals, diaries, and other primary documents, Dion presents us with a keen sense of our contemporary moment. Not allowing us to accept any visual conclusions idly, however, Dion’s work challenges the depths and breadth of our own areas of interest and supposed expertise, including our own particular ethics of learning, teaching, and living.

Dion (b. 1961) is the recipient of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s Lucelia Award (2008), a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2005), and the ninth annual Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (2001). His work has been shown across the globe, including major exhibitions at the Miami Art Museum (2006); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004); Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT (2003); and Tate Gallery, London (1999). In 2007, Dion was featured on the PBS series Art 21. Dion is represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, and In Situ Gallery, Paris.

The exhibition, curated by the University of Arkansas’s Alissa Walls, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Art History, also features a library section, which serves as an introduction for those not as familiar with the artist’s work, as well as an opportunity for those desiring a deeper level of investigation to study further.

Mark Dion, Mobile Ranger Library – Komodo National Park
2008, mixed media, 96 x 84 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches

May 3 - July 26, 2019

Reception: Friday, May 3rd from 5-7pm

The famed photographer Aaron Siskind often spoke of the independent nature of photography that allowed the medium to transcend simply being a representation of a depicted image. Rather, he argued, photographs are more akin to other types of visual art that have the potential to exist as both an object and image. This ethos has been at the core of michael peven’s artistic practice since his days at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Throughout his career, peven—the name he often preferred to be called, and the lower-case letters with which he printed his name—pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable within a photograph. Whether he was affixing pins to his photos, stitching into his artist books, adding sordid images to the interiors of matchbooks, or just capturing a banal subject such as a dog, peven was always looking to simultaneously subvert and champion the field of photography.

Known as a tough-yet-supportive professor, peven always cared greatly about his students. Regardless of their interests, peven insisted that each student obtain the fundamental techniques associated with all photographic media. However, once a student had acquired the skills, he would challenge them to up-end what had been learned in hope of finding a unique voice. Throughout his 40-year career at the University of Arkansas, peven cultivated a new generation of photographers that pushed the medium into the 21st-century.

 The School of Art at the University of Arkansas is honored to organize michael peven: a retrospective. The exhibition provides a small, selective overview of artwork that highlights popular series throughout peven’s career. The hope is to introduce a new generation of artists to his work, while also celebrating the prolific life of an individual who dedicated himself to championing the arts in Arkansas and beyond.

Maryam Amirvaghefi, co-curator

Rebecca Drolen, co-curator