Sasha Rudensky, assistant professor of art, and Jeffrey Schiff, chair and professor of art and art history, curated and introduced the exhibit Picture/Thing Jan. 29 in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. Picture/Thing presents 10 artists who make hybrid objects that challenge the taxonomical limits of photography and sculpture at a time when the definitions of the two media continue to evolve.
Students examine Façade, by Anouk Kruithof, which explores the fragmented and refracted psycho-social state of contemporary New York.In Swan #20, artist Jon Kessler uses a live-cam to pick up the fragmented photographic image of a woman pasted to the back of a cut-out sheet metal relief, projecting it onto a video screen above. The cutouts enable the camera to capture the image of the viewer and the surroundings as well, intermixing the subject and viewer live on the video screen.Defying photography’s ontological specificity as a “window onto the world,” some pieces prioritize the very materiality or object-ness of the photograph over the actual image, while others migrate the graphic flatness of the photograph into the full dimensionality of the sculptural realm. Letha Wilson’s Utah Maine Concrete Slab, uses photography as a material ingredient in the creation of a monolithic sculpture.Jeffrey Schiff explained how the artists included in the exhibition take varying approaches to material, technology, and presentation, expanding and redrawing the traditional perimeters of both.Artist Kendall Baker’s work in the exhibition entails enlargement of the quotidian world beneath our feet: blades of grass. To Baker’s left is Untitled #24, one of the artist’s two contributions to the exhibition.Artists Kendall Baker and Jon Kessler talk with Center for the Arts Director Pam Tatge at the exhibition’s opening reception.Picture/Thing is organized by the Center for the Arts with support from the Department of Art and Art History and the Office of Academic Affairs. The exhibition is open through March 1. (Photos by Aviva Hirsch ’16)
For more information on the exhibit and gallery hours, see this link.
Olivia Drake
James Sims
Editorial Staff
Ziba Kashef