01/23/2023
SUNY Cortland’s Dowd Gallery is inviting persons to come out of their pandemic-induced isolation and bear in mind how to perform.
“(re)Play,” a solo show by Brooklyn-dependent artist David B. Smith, launches the gallery’s spring semester exhibitions with a series of modern and re-interpreted cloth-based mostly sculptures, objects, collages, installations and interactive environments.
The exhibition opened Monday, Jan. 23, and will run by way of Friday, Feb. 24. Readers will knowledge playfully produced fiber environments resembling other-worldly bodies and landscapes that border on abstraction. Smith pushes common arts-and-crafts mediums like textiles, images, embroidery, tufting and portray to new territories.
An opening reception and exhibition tour will be held in the gallery from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 26. The gallery is in the Dowd Fine Arts Heart on the corner of Prospect Terrace and Graham Avenue in Cortland.
The exhibition is cost-free and open to the public, as are the opening reception and all exhibition-related situations. These consist of a digital artist’s discuss, a gallery stroll-via, an artist’s workshop, a documentary screening and supplemental live and digital shows that add new perspectives on the exhibit.
Smith noted how, during the pandemic, people had been separated from communal areas and misplaced connection to every other, to their somatic experience and the follow of interaction and improvisation.
“By re-introducing my previously interactive installations, readers are inspired to occur out of their shells and rediscover their pleasure and curiosity,” he said. “And by means of presenting my intricate collages, comfortable sculptures and photographic weavings, I want to share my vulnerability and creativeness by providing a visible, communal assembly area for other individuals to explore theirs.”
Other than the concepts of perform, the exhibition delivers a assembly put among disciplines these types of as textile art, psychology, biology and gender scientific studies. Objects on show make room for people to explore not only the art but them selves, their steps and intentions.
“The process of my get the job done is central to its which means,” Smith claimed. “I start off by getting emotionally resonant images from electronic collective memory woven into a material, which I then use to build get the job done composed of beings and phenomena from imagined other worlds.”
Website visitors can bodily interact with specified items: for case in point, sliding colorful translucent textile collages alongside taut wires to change the architecture, gentle and aesthetic tone of the place.
“By utilizing these objects to generate ephemeral environments, I invite the viewer to construct a dialogue all-around fictional habitats as a way to re-envision our relation to identification, gender, biology, ecology, psychological overall health, problem-fixing, memory and the joy of improvisation and play,” Smith claimed.
Smith’s approach of re-interpreting narratives and featuring what is attainable aims to invite viewers into this layered and exceptional system, perhaps sparking them to consider their own innovative methods, whether or not they be artwork or in any other discipline.
Accompanying “(re)Play” in the adjacent Hallway Gallery is a display of will work from Smith’s before exhibitions, “Forms of Potential.”
The Dowd Gallery web site and social media comprise specific data about additional plans to the opening reception and contain on-line connection invitations to “(re)Play” digital activities. Take a look at the Facebook, Instagram and the Dowd Gallery site. Reside functions are in the gallery except if noted or else.
“(re)Enjoy gatherings will involve:
- Very first Friday: Friday, Feb. 3. A guided tour of the exhibition has been organized by Cortland Arts Connect to get area from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The function will be both equally are living and digital.
- Digital artists’ talk: Audiences can request thoughts about the artist’s artistic apply and inspiration for “(re)Play” through a virtual event on Webex at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31.
- Documentary screening: “Threaded,” a compilation of shorts, will be offered at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7.
- Gallery Chat: Erin Morris, a SUNY Cortland associate professor in sport administration, will check out the intersections of great art and sport by means of the lens of gender inequality, in “Between Sport and Artwork: Gender Biases at Perform,” at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 8. Morris will examine how socially assigned gender roles are strengthened within just sports activities and art and how we can possibly split down some of these walls.
- Gallery walkthrough: Smith will give a guided tour from 2 to 2:45 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 13.
- Artist’s Workshop: Smith will offer you a “Communal Weaving” session from 3 to 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15, in the Dowd Center Fiber Studio, Space 101. Contributors may perhaps carry an product of apparel or leftover fabric to be slash into strips and woven into the communal sculpture framework created by Smith. The work will benefit from fibers, textiles, collage, blended media, sculpture and improvisational weaving, resulting in an interactive portion of the “(re)Play” exhibition wherever members are co-creators.
- Virtual Gallery Talk: Katarzyna Zimna, affiliate professor of art at the Lodz College of Technology, Poland, will give a virtual discussion in Teams on “Artist, the Player” at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 21. This converse explores the popular notion of play in the art globe, its theoretical context, as well as its distinct manifestations that can be traced in the record of art.
- Documentary Screening: The 2019 movie directed by Halina Dyrschka, “Beyond the Noticeable: Hilma af Klint,” will be screened at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 23.
Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday with prolonged hours until 7 p.m. on Thursdays, and by appointment. Check out the Dowd Gallery site for information about exhibiting artists, other programs, basic safety protocols and online booking. For far more facts or to inquire about an appointment, tour or further photos, contact Gallery Director Jaroslava Prihodova at 607-753-4216.
“(re)Play” is supported by the Art and Artwork Background Division, Art Exhibition Association and a Campus Artist and Lecture Series grant.
