Spring Semester 2024
JAMES PORTO: Strange Visitors
Strange Visitors encompasses a venture into the world of fractalabstraction. Unusual, mostly symmetrical patterns and forms,created entirely with 3D fractal software (no AI in this process), areprinted on aluminum panels. The complex, intricate compositionsinvite viewers to interpret and define the artworks based on theirown perceptions. James Porto is an artist who spent the last fourdecades making photographic illustrations for magazines,advertisements, and exhibitions, primarily through the device oforiginal photography and photorealistic compositing. He is now anAssistant Professor of Photographic Arts at Rochester Institute ofTechnology.
Exhibition: January 15 - February 23, 2024 in Martin Art Gallery
Artist talk: February 22, 2024 from 5-6PM in MAG
Closing reception: February 22, 2024 from 6-7:30PM in CA Lobby
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Image: James Porto, Fractal 001, 2023, fractal image on aluminum
LEAH FRANCES: Things Were Never Normal
This exhibition highlights “third spaces”: components of an area’s infrastructure, communal spaces outside of home and work such as taverns, church picnics, diners, restaurants, and movie theaters - sites where we might gather, if we could agree. Many of these venues have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic or by extreme weather events, both of which have become politicized. The photographs are mostly empty of people, yet pushed-back chairs or half-finished meals on tables show that life did occur here. Pictured are scenes where things once happened, never happened, or might still happen. Yet let us not be buried in collective amnesia: Things were never “normal”.
Exhibition: March 4 - April 12, 2024 in Martin Art Gallery
Opening reception: March 6, 2024 from 5-7PM in CA lobby
Image: Leah Phillips, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 2020, archivalpigment print
ART DEPARTMENT SENIOR THESIS SHOW
Join us for a celebration of the 2024 Art Department graduates.The Senior Thesis Show is a culminating undergraduate experience(CUE) for Art majors that provides the students with an opportunityto demonstrate their mastery of the subject and to reflect onaccumulated content and experiences while looking ahead at newpaths for the future.
Exhibition: April 29 - May 10, 2024 in Martin Art Gallery
Opening reception: May 1, 2024 from 5-7PM in CA lobby
RONALD GONZALEZ: Humanly Possible
Ronald Gonzalez's work is characterized by a desire to innovate through investigations of the complexities of objects and emotion. His work is based on personal and forgotten histories of degraded found objects that are an inherently vulnerable extension of our humanness. The series of heads are presented as anonymous yet individualized portraits that express human comedy and tragedy and an inexorable connection between the object and maker where discarded things become conduits of meaning, connecting life and death, inanimate with animate, inhuman with what is humanly possible. Ronald Mario Gonzalez is a contemporary sculptor and installation artist whose work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions; he is Professor in the Art Department at Binghamton University.
Exhibition: January 15 - April 12, 2024 in Baker Center for the Arts Galleria
Image: Ronald Gonzalez, Head, 2022, found objects, detritus, and steel
MICHAEL VAN HUFFEL: Body Shadows
In 2008, Michael Van Huffel was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, a debilitating yet poorly-understood neuromusculardisease. What followed were eight years of isolation and many experimental treatments. Among other issues, he struggled withfeeling distorted, as if his body was betraying him. What was once a healthy, active lifestyle for the artist had become a constantflow of pain and sickness. Van Huffel’s therapist suggested photography as a means of self-examination, allowing Van Huffel theopportunity to contend with and accept how his body was changing. The artist began photographing his shadow as a metaphor forthe bodily distortion he was experiencing but as he continued the process, he also found himself more willing to look at and acceptthe body he was living in. Michael Van Huffel is an award-winning photographer, animator and musician. After attending BerkleeCollege of Music, his creative career began when working for the musician Prince as an in-house graphic artist at Paisley Park, andlater as Art Director. He went on to work in Hollywood as a Creative Director, also designing motion art for movie titles and trailers.He is now an artist whose ongoing creative work is informed by living with chronic illness.
Exhibition: January 15 - August 9, 2024
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Image: Michael Van Huffel, Yoga 4, n.d., photograph
Collection Works Currently on Display in the Baker Center for the Arts
Throughout the year the Martin Art Gallery rotates permanent collection works that are on display in the Center for the Arts. These large works are hung throughout the common spaces, and extend into areas outside of the Baker Theater building [aka the Fishbowl].
The Martin Art Gallery is open during the fall and spring semesters Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm and Saturdays 12 - 4pm (and closed for all college holidays). The Martin Art Gallery's Galleria Space is open Monday - Sunday, 9:00am - 11:00pm*.
All of our exhibitions and programming are free and open to the public. For further information, please call us at 484 664 3467.
