By: Michelle
King
The Burchfield-Penney
Art Center, is now displaying “Abstraction,” a
compilation of non-representational
art through Nov.20 but don’t try and interpret
this kind of art.
Nancy
Weekly, a curator at The Burchfield-Penney located
at Buffalo State College’s Rockwell Hall explained
that abstract art started in the 60s by artists who wanted
to break away from symbolic art and focus
on techniques such as line quality, asymmetrical shapes,
etc.
The theme of the art show also shadows
the current exhibit at The
Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s “Extreme Abstraction,” which
features national artists and a contemporary collection
from abstract art.
Tom Holt, a preparer
for the collection’s
physical layout, said that planning for the exhibit took
approximately one year. All of the art used has been
owned by the art center or donated by local artists. Holt
said that the art work is carefully placed in air-conditioned
vaults and has to be transported using white gloves to
avoid any damage to the art. Then the art is placed
in complimentary order by colors, shapes, and visual appeal.
The exhibition was also prepared intentionally,
during the same time as the Albright-Knox abstract art.
“I thought it would be great to
see international art across the street and see here (Burchfield-Penney)
what has been produced in our region,” said Weekly.
Holt added
he took particular interest in the art pieces.
“It’s almost self-representational
formal qualities it is about brush strokes and line quality
also it was about artists reacting against thousands of
years of representational art, it was a very liberating
time,” he said. For Holt’s theory, process
is the main focus on producing abstract art.
Methods in the pieces
varied such as those used in James G. Pappas’ drawing titled, “Composition
Relative to Musical Construction #3,” which displays “an
idea of hearing,” which Weekly commented she felt
drawn to the technique with graphite on paper, depicting
soft flowing lines that were created while listening to
Jazz. In Richard Gubernick’s acrylic polymer
on cotton, titled “#105 B, 1970-71,” the theme
used throughout is geometric shapes, while injecting bright
red perfected squares.
“Abstraction” consists
of about 25 artists from western New York such as:
- Steve Miller; “Collective History Through a Cultural
Amnesia,” an acrylic, oil and silkscreen on canvas
- Harriet Grief; “Brown and Gold Landscape,” an
oil on canvas
- Kenneth Patrick Payne; “Siekem,” steel
and brass
- Sally Potenza; “Yellow Edenwald Field” an
acrylic on canvas
- Walter A. Porchownik; “Erosional Break,” an
oil on wood triptych
Admission for BSC students is free with
their student ID, $3 for children and other college students,
$5 for adults, and $4 for those 65 years and older.
For more information
visit The Burchfield-Penney’s
Web Page at http://www.burchfield-penny.org
Michelle King can be contacted at kingmk23@mail.buffalostate.edu
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Richard Gubernick (b. 1933)
#105 B, 1970-71
acrylic polymer on cotton, 64 x 64 inches
Collection of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Gift of Dr. Rait, 1999
(Reused with permission from Burchfield-Penney)
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