Leah Rico - Big Orbit Gallery

4/20 – 5/14/06
“De Vulgari Eloquentia”
Big Orbit Gallery
30D Essex St.
Buffalo, NY 14213
Hours: Thurs. – Sun. 12-5pm
Closing Reception: Sat. 5/6/06, 8-11pm

Buffalo News 4/21/2006

Artist Leah Rico's upbringing in Williamsville, as the daughter of a local mom and a Filipino father, contributed to her intense interest in language. Her current installation, titled "De Vulgari Eloquentia," opened Thursday and runs through May 14 in Big Orbit Gallery, 30-D Essex St. The prerecorded, manipulated spoken words play upon people's preconceived cultural notions of what language means. It addresses, among a range of provocative subjects, how our upbringing and experience may color our perceptions - some perhaps beyond explanation.

You are finishing up a master's in fine art. Your other degrees encompass art history, painting and printmaking. How did you come to employ sound as a medium?

Language is tied into cultural and racial identity, more than geographic location or race. I was always curious about language as a way of tying a group together. Sound is the best media to talk about something that may occur in a moment or a specific conversation.

Your artist's statement includes the phrases "rigid historical stereotypes" and "language-based power structures." We get the idea that you have a lot to say.

Just about everyone uses language. And, as with any art form, the assumption is that what you hear is transparent. For example, the idea that once something is written down, it becomes codified, like a receipt. You have it written down, so that proves something happened.

I'm fascinated by the way that African-American slaves undermined the codified, hierarchical language of the slave owners, who did not know that they were speaking a "secret" language. It was created to keep in one group and to keep out another. Language is not static; it's always developing and changing.

Who or what are some of your influences?

In terms of visual art, there are not a lot of people working in sound. It is considered more sculptural, since it has to do with acoustics. There is a lot of basis in movements that examine language in a deconstructive way, like Dada sound poetry, the Italian modernists or even Native American oral traditions. I am even influenced by events in the 17th century, when there was interest in creating universal language to eliminate civil wars.

By breaking down language and sound either grammatically or sonically, we examine how it is used, and its structure. But it is such a huge thing to say that you are "studying language." It is all based on your own experiences, on casual conversations. I feel that the work should, on some level, be based on an everyday experience.

- Jana Eisenberg, Special to The News

MFA Show - Steven Heil 4/29

Steven Heil’s current body of work is a psychological journey, encouraging the development of multiple sensations as the onlooker may become transfixed in an oscillation between awe and trepidation. The paintings function as remnants of a hostile, scarred landscape and connote a sense of loss and sadness in regards to irreparable environmental alteration, seeking to provide a space of contemplation or meditation on mortality and transcendence. These works serve as an exploration of the incomprehensible power and spirit of a wilderness devoid of human habitation and are a celebration of an illusive and enigmatic spiritual connection to place. Numina is an installation of paintings and drawings that grapple with the unknown, assume no conclusions and question our ongoing, evolving relationship with the landscape.

On View 4/29 -5/26
Opening Reception 4/29
http://www.carnegieartcenter.org

Deborah Jack - Carnegie Art Center

Salt in all its forms has been the conceptual center of Deborah Jack’s work for several years. It was literally cultural currency of her country’s colonial past. She sees the salt of the sea, the salt in coastal breezes and hurricane rain. It functions as a corrosive or preservative. The video image of the crystal “lake” of salt is the harvest site and the piles are the result. The piles of salt are a metaphor for the stockpile of memories stored in nature. This is salt/memory has been harvested for export and will be refined on many different levels for a variety of functions. Like multiple permutations of memories, some are coarse and some more refined. “bounty” is an installation that employs both video and still images.

Artist Website: www.DeborahJack.com

On View 4/29 - 5/26
Opening Reception 4/29 7-9pm
http://www.carnegieartcenter.org

Hallwalls 4/22

laurel farrin
shaun gladwell

April 22–MAY 27, 2006

Opening Reception: April 22, 8–11 pm
Slide Talk: April 22, 7 pm

Laurel Farrin
The paintings of Laurel Farrin encompass multiple gestures to illustrate the malleable persona of visual language. A perpetual construction and deconstruction of form create visual uncertainties in which the paradox of being and becoming is expressed. An intuitive understanding of "betweenness" lies at the heart of the work and Farrin explores these concepts by juggling the basic precepts of Painting’s history: of illusionist representation and the formal emphases of abstraction. Through trompe l’oeil, Farrin addresses the basic deception of painting.

Shaun Gladwell
She depicts an illusionistic canvas on real canvas, a doubling of the object we call a "painting ". The ground becomes a vertical field, an arena without perspective on which abstracted images—improvised primarily from an inventory of modernist painting and popular culture—interact. In some paintings, these typologies "press" into the field, impacting its surface and each other. In others, the forms exist on the periphery, appearing to exist in front of, or behind, the ground. The shifting hierarchy between field and figure, illusion and flatness, triggers conversations about the complications of coexistence, both cultural and personal, which extends beyond the discourse of painting to resonate with the pathos and humor of living.

Prominent in the video work of Australian artist Shaun Gladwell are situational vignettes in which both skateboarding and breakdancing are often the featured actions. At the same time Gladwell’s works are not strictly about these subjects, but serve more aptly as points of departure for other considerations. Within Gladwell’s videos there are undeniable depictions of athleticism and technical proficiency—whether boarding or breakdancing—and their often slow-motion aspect might seem to suggest that illustrating a sporty performance is the point of the work. But these physical maneuvers also operate as formal devices within the works, means by which space is physically disrupted, actually and conceptually. That the actions depicted take place in public spaces bluntly remarks on the manner in which either act (fringe pastimes that have been partially folded into the mainstream culture) can deftly carve up the spaces in which they occur—there is social action and interaction at work here. But additionally, Gladwell uses these actions to elegantly divide his picture plane, a terrain of emphatic colors and composition. Locating hubs of intense action within visuals that are otherwise calmly composed indicates a deep dive into the moment, the sublime within a singular gesture, a repetitive beauty winding its way toward a state of grace.

Shaun Gladwell is represented by Sherman Galleries, Sydney, Australia.

CEPA Openings - 4/22 7pm

A Boy Named Noname - work by David Mitchell
A Floodline by Rachel Detrinis

Runs April 22 - June 3, 2006
Opening Reception 4/22 7pm

www.cepagalery.com

CAUTION: Design Meets Safety 4/20

CAUTION: Design Meets Safety

UB Communication Design students in the Department of Art explore what it means to be safe in a moment of cultural hysteria. From the utilitarian to the absurd, projects include self help kits to protect against technological malice, emergency recipes for dehydrated gasoline and other stress-reducing culinary delights, wearable gadgets and devices to guard against sex offenders, anthrax and peanut butter allergens, a 365 day calendar to relieve daily phobias and much more.

Exhibition opening:
Thursday, April 20, 5-7 pm
UB Art Department Gallery, Lower Level, B45
Center for the Arts, North Campus

Show runs April 20- May 5

The exhibition presented in conjunction with Art 422 Design Issues
instructed by Assistant Professor Stephanie Rothenberg

David Schirm - 4/20

"Welcome to the Promised Land"
Paintings and Drawings
Opens 5-7 April 20th
2nd Floor UB Art Gallery

Public Humanities: Practice and Opportunities 4/13

Public Humanities: Practice and Opportunities

Jane McNamara from the New York Council for the Humanities will present a workshop for graduate students and interested faculty in the humanities. The topic is "Public Humanities: Practice and Opportunities." "Public Humanities" refers the interface between the academy and the public, bridging the gap between the university and the community. 

Jane will talk about what public humanities entails, and what opportunities are available now for grant funding for public humanities projects and what career opportunities look like in the growing fields of public history, museum studies, and cultural development. 

Clemens 830
12:00 noon
Coffee and snacks will be provided; feel free to bring your lunch.

MFA Show - Li Zhang 4/29

Li Zhang
4/29 – 5/5/06
“Walking Through”
Tri-Main Bldg.
2495 Main St.
Buffalo, NY 14214
Hours: By appointment
Opening: Sat. 4/29/06, 8pm-12am

MFA Show - Kirstin Krogh Sturdivan 4/29

Kirstin Krogh Sturdivan
4/29 – 5/5/06
“Illuminati”
Tri-Main Bldg.
2495 Main St. Suite 524
Buffalo, NY 14214
Hours: By appointment
Opening: Sat 4/29/06, 8-10pm

MFA Show - Kristin Desiderio 4/29

Kristin Desiderio
4/29 – 5/5/06
“Nonplus”
Tri-Main Bldg.
2495 Main St.
Buffalo, NY 14214
Hours: By appointment
Opening: Sat. 4/29/06, 8pm-12am

MFA Show - Andrew Hershey 4/17

Andrew Hershey
4/17 – 5/5/06
“MFA Thesis”
Tri-Main Bldg.
2495 Main St.
Buffalo, NY 14214
Hours: By appointment
Opening: Sat. 4/29/06, 8-10pm

MFA Show - NicEllis Withey 4/15

NicEllis Withey
4/15 – 4/30/06
“MFA Exhibition”
Kitchen Distribution Gallery
20 Auburn Ave.
Buffalo, NY 14203
Hours: Wed. – Sat. 4-7pm
Or by appointment (art@kitchendistribution.com)
Opening: Sat. 4/15/06, 7-10pm

FRANCES RESTUCCIA - 4/7

The Group for the Study of the History of Ideas in conjunction with
Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature, Ewa Plonowska
Ziarek and Melodia E. Jones Professor of Romance Languages and
Literatures, Gérard C. Bucher Present:

A Guest Lecture by Professor FRANCES RESTUCCIA of Boston College

Kristeva's Intimate Revolt and the Thought Specular: Encountering the (Mulholland) Drive
Friday, April 7, 2:00 p.m.
Clemens 412
[Refreshments to Follow]

prior to Professor Restuccia's lecture on April 7, please join us for...

A Screening of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive
Thursday, April 6, 3:30 p.m.
Clemens 640

Professor Restuccia has worked extensively in the fields of gender
studies, queer theory, film, modernism, literature, philosophy and
psychoanalysis. She is the editor of a series on Contemporary Theory
for The Other Press (NYC) and the co-chair of the Psychoanalytic
Practices seminar at The Humanities Center at Harvard. Her
publications include Melancholics in Love: Representations of Women's
Depression and Domestic Abuse, James Joyce and the Law of the Father,
and "A Cave of My Own': The Sexual Politics of Indeterminacy." Her
latest book, Amorous Acts: Lacanian Ethics in Modernism, Film, and
Queer Theory is forthcoming from Stanford University Press.

Rebecca Belmore 4/5 - Artist Lecture

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 5 at 2:00, 120 Clemens
Visiting Artist: Rebecca Belmore
Represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale
120 Clemens, 2:00 Artist Talk

This lecture is sponsored by Art History and the UB ART Gallery

Exhibition at McMaster University:
The Named and the Unnamed : Rebecca Belmore
March 16 - Apr 23, 2006
On loan from the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, this installation by Belmore incorporates her 2002 performance Vigil, and presents a commemoration of the women who have gone missing from Downtown East Side of Vancouver. Belmore's performances and multi-media works have drawn critical acclaim in Canada and internationally, including the Biennial of Sydney, Australia, the Havana Biennial, and Site Santa Fe. She represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Alvin A. Lee Building, University Avenue,
McMaster University 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L6
Tel. (905) 525-9140 ext.23081, Fax (905) 527-4548