808 Gallery

The gallery is located at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, on the first floor of the former Peter Fuller Cadillac building.  With its expansive floors, high ceilings, and remaining traces of Art Deco grandeur, the 808 space offers a unique setting for a wide variety of exhibitions featuring student work, but also the work of contemporary artists working in a variety of media.

Current/Upcoming Exhibitions

The Calender’s Tales: Fantasy, Figuration, & Representation

February 2nd – March 31st, 2012
Opening Reception Thursday, February 2nd, 6-8PM

The Calender’s Tales: Fantasy, Figuration and Representation presents the work of contemporary artists who have invented mythical beings, fantastical creatures, allegorical figures, and personal avatars in order to critically engage and challenge concepts of otherness. Ranging from the humble to the heroic, these characters are not limited to permutations of the cultural or racial Other; indeed otherness can also connote in this context alternate states of being or perceptions of self or society.

The title of the exhibition takes its inspiration from The Arabian Nights, the classic anthology of Middle Eastern and South Asian folktales. Employing pictorial strategies that encompass elements of fantasy and allegory (also surrealism and mythopoeia mixed with occasional subversive humor), the participating artists construct and explore diverse identity formations. These “fictionalized” representations inhabit a psychological and physical space that is simultaneously alien and familiar. Expressed broadly and intimately, the works address a range of interconnected issues including the construction of cultural identity and stereotypes, metamorphoses and transcendence, and consumption and desire.

Conceptually driven and visually complex, the exhibition places formal emphasis on painting and works on paper—reminiscent of book illustrations or graphic novels—to demonstrate the various ways studio artists exploit and mobilize traditional materials to create hybrid forms and imaginary bodies.

This group exhibition features a diverse group of artists, including  Trenton Doyle Hancock, Hilary Harkness, Summer Wheat, and Wangechi Mutu.

Read more about Calender’s Tales on BU Today.

MFA Thesis Exhibitions
April 13th-29th, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, April 13th, 6-8PM
(Also held in BUAG at The Stone Gallery)

Gallery hours

Tues-Fri 1-5pm and Sat & Sun 1-5pm

For more information, please call 617-358-0922.