Visual, Accomplished Alumni
InCite gathers ambitious art and its makers in New York City
In the slide show above, images and impressions from an artistic reunion.
Love, loss, and folklore filled the Denise Bibro art gallery in Manhattan Friday, captured in a show of paintings, collages, and sculpture by College of Fine Arts alumni, Reunited: Boston University Alumni Exhibition.
“We believe that the work speaks for itself,” said Richard Ryan, a CFA associate professor of art, before leading a gallery talk with Dana Frankfort, a CFA assistant professor of art. “The art was selected because we saw ambition and perseverance.”
Ryan and Frankfort guided students, faculty, alumni, and artists around the gallery, asking artists who were present to describe their work. The exhibition is part of CFA’s third annual InCite Arts Festival, themed What’s Past Is Prologue. The festival features performances, exhibitions, film screenings, and events through March 10 at venues around Manhattan.
Marc Mitchell’s paintings Shiva and Avelut (Sholoshim) reflect his grief at the death of a family member. Each painting uses gray, black, and white symbols, with a shock of pink.
“They became figurative, and the shapes became stand-ins for people,” said Mitchell (CFA’03), director of the BU Art Gallery. “The oval is a mock-up for me — it’s about my same height and width.”
Swipes of floating red paint hover in a piece by Gabriel Phipps (CFA’00). “These are stripped-down, primitive forms that might reference humans. But these forms aren’t grounded, like in my other paintings,” he said.
Patchwork representation shows in work in paint by Matt Phillips (CFA’07) and in the sewn piece Quilting with Amequa, by Andrea Bergart (CFA’08). Threads of red, white, and blue paint interweave in Kayla Mohammadi’s painting Thank You Obama.
“I first made this in a smaller version,” said Mohammadi (CFA’02). “The larger work made it almost overwhelming. It felt like I could walk into it.”
Jonathon Jackson (CAS’03, CFA’07) started his painting yesterday, today, forever or Qfwfq and the form of space in Ohio before bringing it to his New York studio. The work is about a broken relationship, but also about “the control artists have in a studio,” he said. “It’s one of the few spots where I feel I can manipulate time and space, where I’m in control.”
Lindsey Warren (CFA’04,’08) sees “beauty in ugliness.” In her painting Brookline Beauty, a block apartment building is circled by a rainbow in a bright blue southern California sky, the kind she saw growing up. In Allston Repair, dominating cotton clouds are subtly overshadowed by a repairman working on a streetlight.
After the talk, the gallery filled for a reception. “There’s this amazing community of people,” said Frankfort. “It’s like we’re going out into the world together.”
Reunited: Boston University Alumni Exhibition
Through Saturday, March 13
Denise Bibro Fine Art
529 West 20th St., 4W, New York
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Kimberly Cornuelle can be reached at kcornuel@bu.edu; follow her on Twitter @kcornuel.
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