University of Florida Galleries Present Unique Exhibitions

Sunday, 07 January 2007 12:27

GAINESVILLE, FL - The University Galleries are displaying new exhibitions in each gallery space that will continue through Jan. 12.  Ten Plus Ten: Revisiting Pattern & Decoration (P&D) in University Gallery features a modest sampling of works by ten prominent artists who were part of a significant American art movement in the 1970s.  The exhibition showcases two pieces of art from each artist-one is current work and one is from the P&D period-thus 10+10.  The artists include Brad Davis, Valerie Jaudon, Jane Kaufman, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Kim MacConnel, Tony Robbin, Miriam Schapiro, Ned Smyth and Robert Zakanitch.  This group of P&D artists "bucked the system" in the contemporary art world, predominantly in New York, by creating work that was lush, beautiful and ornate during a time period when minimalist, conceptual artwork was mainstream.  Each is working in the art world today, achieving individual recognition.  Collectors Norma Canelas and Bill Roth, both from Orlando, Fla., have an extensive collection of the P&D work and have loaned many of their paintings and other media such as drawing and fiber works for the exhibition.

Photographing Paris, exhibition in Focus Gallery, is a selection of the work produced by students enrolled in an honors photography course held at the UF Paris Research Center during the spring 2006.  The class was designed to introduce students to the basic techniques of photography using the city of Paris as a playground for experimentation.  The course covered topics ranging from the history of the Paris in images of melancholy, surrealist photography and the mapping of the unconscious, voyeurism, street photography and the artist as the drifter to postwar humanism and modernist conceptions of photography, realism, symbolism, opticality and abstraction.

With the exception of one, all the students participating in Photographing Paris had not taken classes in photography before.  The aesthetic and conceptual complexity are testimony of the extraordinary stimulating and learning experience that the Paris Research Center provides to students at the University of Florida.

Grinter Gallery presents Visual Communication with the Gods: Hindu Art in Context, an exhibition curated by Jeremy Underwood for his museum studies thesis project. Through his selection of paintings and sculptures belonging to the Harn Museum of Art, Underwood, with help from Hindu devotees in the Gainesville community, illustrates the diversity and intimacy of Hinduism.  The objects in the exhibition range from household shrine objects to grain measuring cups accompanied by contextual photographs of household shrines from India and Gainesville.  Visual Communication with the Gods: Hindu Art in Context conveys the permeating existence of Hinduism in everyday life and endeavors to exhibit an honest and accurate portrayal of Hindu beliefs and practices through photographs and quotidian religious objects. 

For further information visit the University Galleries web site at www.arts.ufl.edu/galleries