Reception: Thursday, Sept. 4, 4-6 p.m.
Eight School of Art graduate students will showcase their work in “Surface Tension” from Aug. 26 to Oct. 2 at the Lionel Rombach Gallery.
The exhibition is the culminating event of Assistant Professor of Practice Yana Payusova‘s spring 2025 Interdisciplinary Graduate Critique class. It features the work of Arshia Amin, Aubrey Behrens, Molly Etchberger, Steven Gray, Alexis Joy Hagestad, Angelica Jones, Porter Norton McDonald and Eden Squires.
Exhibition statement:
A surface, an outermost layer, is that which, from the outside, is most readily apparent. And yet, with a shift of perspective, the surface is also that which one emerges through from the inside, in the act of surfacing. In her essay “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag explored the tension inherent to the interpretive act, the overwhelming demand to wring content from the work, which in her mind destroyed its ability to speak at all.
What do we expect from a work of art? What assumptions do we make about the relationship between art and artist? How does the venue for the presentation of art, for instance a “Gallery” on a University Campus in 2025, affect the manner in which it is presented and understood? What do we want from the text that accompanies works of visual art and why is it that we are so nervous about the potential proliferation of meaning inherent to a work that we require locking it down, describing it, in a text that can only ever serve to displace the autonomy of the work as such? Put differently, where exactly is the surface in the complex dialectic of aesthetic production and consumption, and who exactly has the authority to define it?
