“The Pond, the Mirror, the Kaleidoscope:Contemporary Figuration Through a Symbolist Lens” Exhibition
SVA Chelsea Gallery
This event has ended.
The School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “The Pond, the Mirror, the Kaleidoscope: Contemporary Figuration Through a Symbolist Lens,” an exhibition of emerging and established painters who graduated from SVA and are working in the Symbolist tradition. These “neo-Symbolists” make mythological and dreamlike pictures that challenge prevailing assumptions about narrative, subjectivity and figurative painting itself. As the exhibition title suggests, subjects may be environmental (“the Pond”), societal and cultural (“the Mirror”), or a post-apocalyptic, futuristic mash-up (“the Kaleidoscope”).
The exhibition is curated by Thomas Woodruff, chair of the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department, and features work by alumni of that program as well as the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Department, which is chaired by Marshall Arisman.
“Like the Symbolists, today’s neo-Symbolists are arguably eccentric and obsessive, and they use low-tech methods to tell new stories to new audiences,” says Woodruff. “They make art that is intellectually surprising, brimming with visions of the world as it is—or how it could be. And like the Symbolists, they are sometimes dismissed as ‘mere illustrators’ because they work in a figurative tradition.”
More than 30 paintings, drawings and sculptures are on view. Exhibiting artists are SVA alumni from the BFA Illustration or MFA Illustration of Visual Essay departments.
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Schedule
from August 20, 2013 to September 14, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-09-11 from 18:00 to 20:00