NYAB Event - "Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog" Exhibition

"Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog" Exhibition

This event has ended.
At Hunter College Times Square Gallery
Media: Painting, Photography, Sculpture, Installation, Video installation, Performance Art

The Hunter College Art Galleries are pleased to present Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog, an exhibition featuring 16 international artists whose use low-tech means to create astonishing and stirring illusions. The intricate and elaborate works on view conjure deliberate deceptions (“smoke and mirrors”) and naturally occurring illusions (“shadows and fog”). Although these works would seem to lend themselves to the digitized special effects and technology readily available today, this select group of artists tends to prefer age-old techniques such as trompe l’oeil painting, shadow play, and mirror anamorphosis.

Several of the artists in Smoke+Mirrors/Shadows+Fog employ shadow, reflection, smoke, and even gravitational pull to create substantive permanent artworks. For example, Jim Dingilian (whose latest works will be on view for the first time at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery) captures smoke residue in empty liquor bottles and then uses Q-tips and toothpicks to draw detailed dimensional landscapes on the inside of the transparent glass. Other artists included in the exhibition represent space, distance and dimensionality so convincingly that they seemingly dematerialize solid architecture (in a few cases the gallery walls themselves). This phenomenon is epitomized in Sarah Oppenheimer’s site-specific installation—a custom-designed aperture fit directly into the gallery’s entrance wall which effectively distorts the depth of field so that the adjacent space appears flat, like a projected image.