"Topophilia" Exhibition
SVA Gramercy Gallery
This event has ended.
School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents "Topophilia," an exhibition of painting, photography and sculpture by SVA students and alumni that examines our integral relationship with the surrounding environment. The title, directly translated to mean "love of place," uses a term coined by Dr. Yi-Fu Tuan that emphasizes a person's holistic ties to the material world. The exhibition is curated by Eric Lendl, exhibition coordinator of student galleries.
Employing architecture as both metaphor and muse for his paintings, Nicholas Bakita uses shape, line and color to construct the intentionally ambiguous buildings and facades in his works. Often bordering on the surreal, his process is that of a construction worker, layering from foundation to interior until an idealized space can be realized. Bakita is a student in the MFA Fine Arts Department.
Adapting to the Manhattan landscape after previously photographing in Tennessee, Travis Brown's series Underexposed documents our city's vegetation at night, illuminated only by the camera's flash. The captured images seemingly burst from complete darkness, revealing the beautifully delicate forms that lie beneath. Brown is a student in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department.
Elli Chung's Memento contemplates our intimate sensorial relationship with space by pairing landscapes de void of people and still lifes of hair without bodies. Drawing from Shinto and Buddhist mythologies, in which hair is a transcendental force, Chung identifies a presence that exists through an absence. These images, juxtaposed with empty landscapes, converge to represent notions of memory, spirit, and death. Chung is a student in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department.
Utilizing tree imagery in his works, m benjamin herndon explores the role of transience in the relationship between humankind and nature. Through printmaking techniques and sculpture, the artist evokes nostalgia for an increasingly distant natural world, while simultaneously granting access into his unfettered landscapes. Herndon is a student in the BFA Fine Arts Department.
Jonathan Wolloch's close-up photography series Pattern presents New York City as a series of formal elements, full of colors, textures and shapes. Combined to form a grid of one hundred, the photos display a calm and poetic ambience while at the same time paying homage to the raw, urban essence of the city. Wolloch is a 2011 graduate of the MAT Art Education Department.
[Image: Nicholas Bakita "Untitled (W. 23rd)" (2011) Oil, Oil stick, Pencil, 29.5 x 17.75 in.]
Media
Schedule
from August 03, 2011 to August 24, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-08-08 from 17:00 to 19:00