First Exhibition of Fall Season Opens at Bradbury Art Museum
JONESBORO – Body [Parts] is the first exhibition of the fall season at Bradbury Art Museum. The show will open to the public Thursday, Aug. 23, at 5 p.m. and will run through Sept. 19. The museum is located in Fowler Center at Arkansas State University. The exhibition and the reception are admission-free and open to the public.
Some of the earliest known works of art are images of the human figure. Throughout the ages, the body has continued to fascinate artists, and after thousands of years the subject still holds the interest of makers and viewers alike. The disparate approaches to this obsession of depicting the human body are as varied as the human characteristics and individuals portrayed.
Included in the exhibition are six contemporary artists who work in a variety of media, according to Les Christensen, director of Bradbury Art Museum. Their depiction of the figure ranges from its absence, as found in the work of painter Jacqueline Bishop, to fragmentation as seen in the art of Lynné Bowman Cravens and Rod Moorhead. Partial representation of the body can be found in the paintings of Angela Davis Johnson and video installation by Dustin Steuck. Printmaker Neal K. Harrington depicts individual parts as well as the figure as a whole.
In the series presented at BAM, New Orleanian Bishop uses little girls’ vintage dresses as her canvas to address historical, politic and ecological issues. These small garments bring to mind little children and their vulnerability, much like that of the landscape she portrays on them.
Cravens, an interdisciplinary photographer from Fort Worth, works with self-portraits that she folds and forms until the subject is unrecognizable. The use of the body remains evident but not her identity.
Harrington, from Russellville, creates bold, monochromatic wood block prints. His lively characters are placed in somewhat unusual and enigmatic circumstances often leaving the viewer guessing what they are up to.
Atlanta artist Davis Johnson paints those who she sees as residing or taking refuge in “blue holes” or deep chasms where dark memories reside. These are portraits of people who have used “blue holes” as pathways or portals to escape the reality of the earthly world.
Moorhead, a ceramic sculptor from Oxford, Miss., creates exquisitely beautiful figures, reminiscent of fragmented classical statuary. His ephemeral creations are timeless and as the artist states, come from “the cultural ether” and are “repackaged into something like our own.
The final work included in “Body [Parts]” is a video installation by Minneapolis artist Dustin Steuck. His work combines Greek mythology, social media and art history to “contrast the authority of the past with the fleeting satisfaction of the new.”
BAM hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, noon to 7 p.m. on Thursday, noon to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, and by appointment. The museum is closed on Monday and when the university is not in session.
For additional information about the exhibition and upcoming events, one may visit BradburyArtMuseum.org or contact the museum at (870) 972-3471.
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