Topics
Page Two
Masthead
|
Topics |
Page Two |
Masthead |
|
|
| ||
| ||
Three Art Exhibits Now on Display on UCSF Parnassus Campus By Nancy Nye Jones The Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Art, Honors and Recognition brings to the UCSF campus community three outstanding art exhibits are now on display: “Peter Voulkos : Clay into Bronze” which resides in the Kalmonvitz Library; the “Ocean Mirrors with Fragments” by Jim Campbell, located in Saunders Court; and “Truth is I am You” by Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev which is installed along the walkway between the School of Nursing and the School of Dentistry. Peter Voulkos: Clay into Bronze Peter Voulkos (1924-2002) is acknowledged as one of the 20th Century's most important innovators in the visual arts. In the mid-1950s and continuing throughout his career, Voulkos experimented with large-scale abstract ceramic sculpture, taking clay beyond its use for utilitarian objects. Voulkos began with the thrown form and then, by adding clay slabs, he would manipulate the surfaces – adding, subtracting or cutting into the built up forms. He has been quoted as saying: “The form of pottery is its own thing. What I do with that form is mine.” Throughout his career, Voulkos was to concentrate his works in clay to essentially three forms: the plate, ice bucket and stack. In the early 1990s, Voulkos began to make molds from some of his works in clay. His intent was to create works that expressed both the depth of glazed ceramic and evidence of the artist’s hand, along with the durability and toughness of bronze. These brilliantly detailed bronze castings with mottled patinas have been compared to the refined surfaces of traditional Chinese bronze sculptures. From 1959 until his retirement in 1985, Voulkos taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Throughout the decades, Voulkos influenced generations of artists to experiment and push existing boundaries as much by his forceful personality and his own work as by his classroom teaching. The nine works in the exhibition were fabricated during the 1990s and represent works created throughout his career from 1959 to 2000 and are on loan courtesy of the Estate of Peter Voulkos and the Braunstein Quay Gallery, San Francisco. On Exhibit: February 20, 2008 to February 20, 2009 Ocean Mirror with Fragments by Jim Campbell Located in Saunders Court, Ocean Mirror with Fragments consists of an approximately five-foot-square grid of 100 glass blocks mounted onto a low concrete footing installed within the green area on the east side of the courtyard. The artwork is set into the middle of the green so that the plants will grow around and in front of the work. There are white LED lights mounted within each glass block controlled by an electronic circuit to create an overall moving image of ocean waves. The ocean image displayed is from a video taken directly west of the artwork's location of the Pacific Ocean creating a mirror back to the ocean. Three to seven glass blocks will be scattered within the green area near the large video, each synchronized to a different block within the main work. The movement within and between these scattered glass blocks will create the effect of ocean waves going beyond the display grid into the garden area. The further away one is from the grid, the more the image is readable. San Francisco resident Jim Campbell received his BS in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from MIT in 1978 and has pursued careers in technology and art. His video and technology based art has won national recognition. He was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and was selected as one of the featured artists in the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005. His work has been exhibited internationally in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and is in the permanent collections of major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MOMA in New York as well as the SFMOMA and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. THE TRUTH IS I AM YOU by Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev Installation of Diebond speech balloons, maps, placards, and Lenticular prints, 2008 The Truth is I Am You is a poem installed as a series of speech balloons that line the covered walkway linking the School of Nursing and the School of Dentistry. The 300-foot installation highlights the diversity of cultures that exemplify the UCSF community. Each balloon displays a single line from the poem translated into 24 languages spoken by the student body. Placards containing a phonetic spelling in English accompany them, so that any person can learn to say each line. Starting with, “The truth is I am you” and ending with “The truth is I love you,” this piece attempts to use this corridor as brief passageway to other systems of considering who we are, what we value, where we come from, and where we are going. An inverted map of the world (with the North and South poles reversed) accompanies the poem as well as a lenticular print of a man translating a line from the poem into sign language. The languages include Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, and others. The truth is . . . Born and raised in New York, Hank Willis Thomas graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Photography and Africana Studies in 1998. He received an MFA in Photography and an MA in Visual Criticism in 2004 from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. His photographs have been published in numerous books and publications including: Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers (W.W. Norton, 2000), Friendship (M.I.L.K. Press, 2000), 25 Under 25: American Photographers (Power House Books, 2003) and Black: A Celebration of a Culture (Hylas Publishing,2004) and Winter in America (81 Press, 2006). His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the country including multiple Smithsonian Institutions, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Thomas is a 2006 recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award and is currently included in The California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. Hank lives and works in New York and San Francisco. Born in Bulgaria and raised in the Bay Area, Ryan Alexiev received a BA in History from University of California at Berkeley in 1994. He began practicing graphic design in 1995 and, since that time, has held senior art director positions at several companies such as Dazzle, eMuzed, and the Distributed Learning Workshop. Working with a team of instructors, he was contracted to design and develop a course management and delivery system currently being used by over a hundred universities including UCBerkeley, UCLA, and Stanford. Ryan has also received numerous awards, including “best software design” (1999) and has taught a course on Instructional Design at Columbia University. Ryan is currently in the MFA program at California College of the Arts and is also a practicing artist and has exhibited at galleries across the country.
| ||
Synapse is part of the Office of Student Life and Student Academic Affairs. | ||