Breaking Through offers various perspectives in the world, calling attention to the disparities that exist yet exploring what could be through dystopian and utopian lenses.
Utilizing a range of mediums, including ceramics, metalwork, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video, the artists examine cultural, social, and political issues in a divisive world. Some artists reexamine histories that have gone untold, creating new narratives and bringing indigenous knowledge to the forefront. Several artists document and depict scenes of daily lives, highlighting differences in belief systems.
Abstracted works serve as metaphors for porous boundaries and vulnerabilities of our bodies as well as reminders of environmental problems. Detritus is reused and transformed.
Contemporary jewelry and other metalworks address concerns about surveillance, privacy, and censorship, and subvert our expectations of preciousness and control. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some students have had to rethink and adapt their projects, striving to gain new points of view by imagining and inhabiting fantastical and hidden worlds.
These artists are breaking through and creating exciting possibilities.
Breaking Through will be on display from November 7–15, 2020 in the Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery and the North Gallery at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.
For further details, visit newpaltz.edu/museum.
SUNY New Paltz’s MFA program combines the best aspects of a vigorous studio practice within the context of a comprehensive liberal arts education. Our proximity to New York City, affordable tuition, numerous scholarship and assistantship opportunities, and nationally recognized programs attract a broad variety of competitive, skilled graduate students from around the world.
Contact Department of Art Graduate Coordinator Matthew Friday at fridaym@newpaltz.edu for more information.
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