UNH Today

Two new exhibitions Syndicates: Andrew Witkin (among others) and Long Eye will be on view at the Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire beginning January 25 – March 31, 2018. A reception takes place on Thursday, January 25, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. The Museum of Art and programs are open to the public free of charge. The Museum will be closed March 9-18, 2018.

Syndicates: Andrew Witkin (among others)

Boston-based artist Andrew Witkin’s studio practice involves aggregating, arranging, collecting and/or fabricating everyday ideas, images and objects to investigate systems and frameworks of information and their intellectual and psychological effects in the world. Syndicates include text-based works, graphic elements, woven fabrics and collages of newspaper photographs that collectively blur the systematic with the haphazard in which meaning is layered and elusive.

Witkin will be on campus Wednesday, February 7, presenting a lecture about his work on display and his studio practice, 12:10 -1 p.m., Paul Creative Arts Center, Museum of Art. This lecture is free and open to the public.

Andrew Witkin (b. 1977), received a Master of Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University. Witkin a recipient of the prestigious Foster Prize by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. His works are in the collections of the DeCordova, Lincoln, MA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Witkin is partner and director of Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston and has served as the editor of the Sol LeWitt Catalogue Raisonné of Prints and is the editor of the forthcoming Mel Bochner Catalogue Raisonné of Prints.

Image credit: Andrew Witkin, Untitled, 2017-17, newspaper, shrink wrap, museum board, and powder-coated aluminum frame, Courtesy of Theodore Art, Brooklyn and James Harris Gallery, Seattle, 24.13” x 31.75”

Long Eye

The Museum of Art, Paul Creative Arts Center and the University Museum, Dimond Library present collaborative exhibitions about the Arctic and Antarctica.

The University Museum, Dimond Library presents, To the Ends of the Earth: New Hampshire’s Connection to Polar Exploration and Research, an exhibition on historic polar exploration, particularly Admiral Byrd’s second expedition, as well as today’s climate science research at UNH and other NH institutions. Please visit www.library.unh.edu/museum for more information.

The Museum of Art presents Long Eye, featuring contemporary works of art created in response to the colors, shapes, sounds, and climate of both the Arctic and Antarctica. The work, most of which is time- or sound-based, stand as metaphors for the regions themselves—monumental, breathtaking, fleeting— creating impressions of places that can only truly be experienced in person. Exhibiting artists include Eric Aho, Resa Blatman, Wendy Jacobs, Andrea Juan, Anna McKee, Claudia O'Steen and Aly Ogasian.

The romantic lure of polar exploration past and present (particularly failed expeditions) appeals to artists Eric Aho and the team of Claudia O’Steen and Aly Ogasian. Aho’s 2016 painting An Unfinished Point in a Vast Surrounding (for Henry Worsley) commemorates the tragic ending of British explorer Henry Worsley’s 2015 effort to complete Ernest Shackleton’s (1874-1922) unfinished transcontinental trek to the South Pole. O’Steen and Ogasian’s own Arctic voyage,inspired in part by S.A. Andreé’s (1854-1897) failed attempt to reach the North Pole by hot air balloon, resulted in the collaboration Farthest North, 2017, a blending of the spirit of discovery with field-research practices.

Resa Blatman, like O’Steen and Ogasian, explores the intersection of art and science through first-hand experiences and observations. Inspired by the tides, currents, and melting glaciers seen during her 2015 trip to the Arctic Circle, Blatman created sumptuous undulating abstract paintings that are specific to place, but suggest an environment in flux.  Argentinian artist Andrea Juan creates poetic performances and installations in Antarctica to highlight the environmental catastrophe posed by retreating glaciers around the world and the melting of the continent’s coastline. In Solar Storm, 2014,Juan transforms hard-scientific research into billowy, lyrical fabric installations to bring attention to the imperiled landscape. Anna McKee and Wendy Jacob use field-research methods and actual data in their evocative sculptures. Wendy Jacob’s, Ice Floe, 2011, manipulates field-collected audio recordings to meditate on the passing of time. Her work transmutes the sound of tiny air bubbles bursting from melting ice into vibrations we can feel. Anna McKee’s Reliquary is based on her 2009 visit to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core field camp. There she witnessed scientists drill and extract ice from a depth of two-miles. Her installation suggests the contours of a ridge or elevation chart—it is, in fact, an artistic interpretation of the past 68,000 years of Antarctic temperature fluctuations and an abstract representation of geologic time.

Exploration is at the heart of the multi-sensory works of art in Long Eye. Whether contemplating failed expeditions or responding artistically to personal experiences in the Polar Regions, the exhibiting artists attempt to disrupt perceptions of scale, place, and time and offer alternatives to understanding the fragile environments at the ends of the Earth.

Additional exhibition programming for Long Eye and To the Ends of the Earth: New Hampshire’s Connection to Polar Exploration and Research include: Thursday, January 25, 4 – 5 pm, Exhibition Walkthrough: Historian and collector Robert Stephenson, leads an exhibit walkthrough, To the Ends of the Earth: New Hampshire’s Connection to Polar Exploration and Research, University Museum, Dimond Library. Panel Discussion: Long Eye artist Anna McKee and Mark Twickler, UNH Sr. Research Project Manager, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space. Panel discussion made possible the Iola Hubbard Climate Change Endowment, 5 – 6 pm, Paul Creative Arts Center, A218. Opening Reception: Long Eye, Museum of Art, and To the Ends of the Earth: New Hampshire’s Connection to Polar Exploration and Research, Dimond Library, 6 – 8 pm.

Long Eye and Syndicates: Andrew Witkin (among others) exhibits and accompanying programs are supported by Friends of the Museum of Art. The Museum of Art hours of operation during the academic year: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 10 am-4 pm; Thursday, 10 am -8 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 1-5 pm; closed University holidays. Museum will be closed March 9-18, 2018. All programs are free and open to the public. Follow the Museum of Art on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram #MOAUNH.