CLOSED FOR SUMMER BREAK

2009-10 EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

15 Minutes of Time
August 28, 2009
6:32pm - 6:47pm













Grant Miller
October 9 - November 6, 2009











Asma Kazmi
November 13 - December 18, 2009

Karin Hodgin Jones
March 27 - April 17, 2009

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present recent work by this year’s visiting artist Karin Hodgin Jones. Using a variety of media, such as motors, microcontrollers, wood, fabric, thread, solar panels and generators in her sculpture and installation work, Hodgin Jones focuses heavily on the feeble lines that connect the organic to the mechanical. Utilizing kinetics, she creates sprawling and odd installations, that both, tug, breathe and wave, all in an effort to mimic technology’s interference in our natural landscape and its altering relationship to the human body. Her interest lies in systems analysis, language translation and the role of machines in the human condition, the combination of these elements creates the context for meaning in her work. She states that: “the machine begins to stand in opposition to the body in competitive ways and casts a different light on its function.” Building on this idea, the philosopher, Martin Heidegger terms “standing reserve” as: “the relationship of the desires of humans to bring forth from the landscape energies to service the standardized grid of power.” As a point of reference for this new work, Hodgin Jones also believes as technology advances, the ways that we understand nature is inevitably altered. Interested especially in our continuation to form new and complex relationships with a variety of machines, this site-specific installation will utilize the luminosity of the gallery lighting system, to set her work in motion. Concerned with our disability to recognize the landscape for its contour, color, texture and vitality, her work intends to somehow distance the machine from the human body, but simultaneously make the elements that bind them more dependent and more visible.

Biography: Karin Hodgin Jones received her MFA from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in 2008 and her BFA is from the University of Utah. She has exhibited throughout the U.S. and has received funding and support for a variety of projects. Exhibitions venues include: a solo exhibition at: Lightwell Gallery, Oklahoma University, Norman, OK; Group shows at: I Space Gallery, Chicago, IL; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; Mass Gallery in Austin, TX; New Visions Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT; Gittins Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT. IN 2005 her work was featured as one of the 9 collections in the Ninth Letter Art and Literary Journal.

Fi Jae Lee
February 20 - March 20, 2009

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present recent work by South Korean based artist Fi Jae Lee. Since participating in the reality show Art Star Season Two last year, in which film crews chronicled the life of MFA students from the Art Institute of Chicago, Fi Jae Lee has moved back to her native Seoul to concentrate on new sculpture. Using several stories like the Garden of the Eden, The Wine-Lake and Meat Forest of the Yin Dynasty, The Great Whore of the Apocalypse, as a point of reference, Lee uses sculpture to give physical incarnation to what she describes as “the unbreakable and fundamental energy, which established and maintains the world–our selfish desires.” Her creative quest is to share her realization that people rarely attain this knowledge because of “the skin”, which wraps and hides their desire. Using soft materials, collage, performance and installation, Lee enters a strange realm that references both religion and mysticism. Through stuffed grotesque, surrealistic creatures perched on office furniture and pools of red wine as centerpiece to mad celebration, she actively invites the viewer inside her world of strange ritual and an embodiment of her personal belief systems. Seen in its entirety, the work also represents human desire, she asks viewers to “shed their skin” in order to not only witness the barbarous orgy, but to take an active role in realization and transformation. Her sculpture and performance will help move toward an understanding of the fundamental idea behind her work in which she feels that as human beings we cannot be absorbed in the true energy of the universe because of the obstacles of love and fear received from the body.

Biography: Fi Jae Lee received her MFA in 2007 and her BFA in 2005 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include: Le Massacre de Jesus Egoïste, Aix-en-Provence France, 2007; Skin & Out, Caladan Gallery, Beverley MA, 2006; My Shrine, Base Space, Chicago, IL, 2006; A Person Searching for Eyes, a Nose and a Mouth, Gallery Batang Gol, Seoul, Korea, 2007. Her recent group exhibitions include: Scope Miami Art Fair, Miami FL, 2007; M. F. A. Exhibition, Gallery 2 and Project Space, Chicago, IL, 2007; Gallery 2 and Project Space, Chicago, IL, 2007; International Assemblage Artists Exhibition, Berlin, Germany, 2006; Birth of World, Caladan Gallery, Beverley MA, 2006; Wrestling with the New Science, Around the Coyote, Chicago IL, 2005; B. F. A Exhibition, Gallery 2 and Project Space, Chicago, IL, 2007; Art Bash, Gallery 2 and Project Space, Chicago, IL, 2005.

This exhibition made possible by generous support of the Missouri
Arts Council and the Regional Arts Commission.

Fi Jae Lee Catalog

Brigham Dimick
January 16 – February 13, 2009

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present recent work by artist Brigham Dimick. Based in Edwardsville, Illinois, Dimick’s new work combines personal and collective narratives about imminent and occurring danger, both real and imagined. In his works on paper, he invents a context surrounding his body, playing on ideas of effacement and chance. The use of charcoal in the work draws a parallel between his subject matter and the physical material used to create, providing a record of the body. Dimick is also concerned with the tensions between intellectual and emotional responses to forceful disruptions, and the varieties of visual systems we employ to both measure and portray natural forces. Shifts in scale relationships are utilized to engender metaphoric interpretations. In his paintings, he employs arterial systems such as highways and branches to suggest collective culture and embody personal allegory. The works are responses to a personal experience of anaphylactic shock and serve as a creative outlet in order to explain his brush with mortality. Both compositionally and conceptually, he approaches the organization of these “branches” as a point toward the effects of anaphylaxis within the vascular system. Ultimately, the form of a human body and/or remains acts as a memorial site in order to create empathy for catastrophic events experienced both personally and collectively.


Biography: Brigham Dimick earned his MFA in 1991 in Painting at the School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. In 1985 he earned his BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Elkins Park, PA. His selected recent solo exhibitions include: Brigham Dimick: Mortal Bodies, Jacoby Art Center, Alton, IL, 2008; Brigham Dimick: Waxworks/Drawings, University Art Gallery, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, 2007; Confluences Invitational Exhibition, Center for the Arts, Lungwha University, Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C., 2005; Brigham Dimick: Constructions/Entropies, Catich Gallery, Galvin Fine Arts Center, St. Ambrose University, Davenport, IA, 2005. His selected recent group exhibitions include: Plane/Text, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, 2007; In Our Own Backyard, Lancaster Museum of Art, Mainline Art Center, Erie Art Museum, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art at Altoona, Sharadin Art Gallery, Kutztown University, 2004-05.

This exhibition made possible by generous support of the Missouri Arts Council and the Regional Arts Commission.

Brigham Dimick Brochure

Eamon Colman
November 21 – December 19, 2008

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present recent work by Irish artist Eamon Colman.
Eamon Colman’s paintings explore the interdependency of nature and nurture in landscape painting. Using striking luminescent colors, each of which compiles landscapes of organic forms and delicate painterly strokes, Colman speaks in a personalized visual language. Each painting tells of a specific physical journey or exploration of both familiar and exotic landscapes—Africa, Ireland and the United States—yet each painting is ambiguous enough to allow the imagination to wander. As a devoted colorist, he also explores the painting’s “otherness” through defining a sense of place, both personally and historically through a layering of symbolic gestures. His work presents a flattening ‘topography’ of symbols, but also a multi-layered cartography of paint. The work then acts as a way of articulating his personal relationship to his chosen subject.

Biography: His selected solo exhibitions include: River Run Pass Tumble Down, Greenacres Gallery, Wexford, 2008; Vantage, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, 2007; Breath of the River, Galeri Caernarfon Cyf, Wales, 2006; Between Bog and a Sagging Wall, Vangard Gallery, Cork, 2006; Knot of Souls, South Tipperary Arts Center, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary Salt River, St. David’s University, Lampeter, Wales, 2004; Africa 22 - 35 S, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, 2004; Walking Vermont, Vermont Studio Centre USA, 2002; Rain on Water, Rubicon Gallery , Dublin, 2000. Selected group exhibitions: Colour Fields, Draiocht, Dublin, 2007; Nicholas Gallery, Belfast, 2007; Art Miami, Hillsboro Fine Art, USA, 2007; Eigse, Carlow, 2005; Boyle Arts Festival, 2005; Kilcock Art Gallery, 2005; Amber Arts Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2005; Eigse, Carlow, 2004; RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin, 2004. He lives and works in Kilkenny, Ireland.

This exhibition made possible by generous support of the Missouri
Arts Council, the Regional Arts Commission and Culture Ireland.

Eamon Colman Catalog

Jason Hackenwerth
September 26 - October 31, 2008

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present recent work by New York – based artist Jason Hackenwerth. Hackenwerth rigorously constructs complex balloon creations, which a spirit of wonder and oddity. Inspired by the forms of sea creatures, fossils, and giant prehistoric creatures, Hackenwerth’s forms evoke universal themes of life, birth and death. To build his monumental biomorphic sculpture, Hackenwerth knots and shapes hundreds of brightly colored inflated balloons into magical and ephemeral configurations and forms of lively cobbled creatures. The kinetic installations are made up of organic, latex neon forms, reminiscent of anemones and urchins. In addition, his large-scale photographs are meant to capture the sculptures in their most vibrant condition. They are set in what could be post-apocalyptic landscapes while simultaneously functioning as costumes they capture a moment of the performance. As wearable sculpture, he temporarily inserts a soul into his creations, the works are at-once full of life and breath. As predictable each tendril loses both the trapped air and their sense of vibrancy, the work visibly wilts over the course of the exhibition, their ephemeral nature reflects our own lives,. They employ an eerie cinematic quality, portraying animated attack scenes, all acting as a philosophical inquiry into the nature of mortality.

Jason Hackenwerth Brochure

For Educational Use Only...
(Film and video from the art department library)
August 29 – September 19, 2008

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present For Educational Use Only. The gallery will host an interactive learning environment to view the film and video works by well-known modern and contemporary artists collected to date by Webster University’s Art Department library. The works will be displayed as part of an exploratory teaching method for the taught Art Forum class as part of the art department’s curriculum and are adapted to create a new, temporary learning environment. As a direct response to traditional higher education teaching methods, For Educational Use Only will provide a learning and resource center for the collected works along with related books, videos, websites and other media. Designed as an improvised classroom, the gallery will be utilized for these multimedia artworks in order to integrate and share these instructional resources and to provide a conceptual framework that allows flexibility in both teaching and learning. This multimedia project has been created as part of an organized learning activity and to provide a setting for research of modern and contemporary film and video through a series of weekly non-traditional instructional activities and viewing programs.

Materials are included under the fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law and have been prepared according to the educational multimedia fair use guidelines and are restricted from further use.

Exchange: Prints from Nagoya Japan
March 21 – April 18, 2008

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present Exhange: Prints from Nagoya Japan. This international exhibition brings together a group of artists exploring contemporary Japanese printmaking and denotes a unique blend of refined traditional methods, emerging techniques and new technology. The artists represented in this exhibition include work by internationally recognized artists: Terou Isomi and Seiichiro Miida, as well as prints by emerging artists. While grounded in a clear Japanese aesthetic, the work in this exhibition pushes the boundaries of printmaking using radical techniques, to create dynamic compositions and complex layers that also incorporate visual concepts that are crisply contemporary. The works in this exhibition also represent the foundation of an exchange between the Department of Art at Webster University and the Department of Art at Aichi University in Nagoya Japan.

Odavde/Otuda (from here/from there)
An International Exhibition of Contemporary Bosnian Artists
February 8 – March 14, 2008

Alen Basic - Isak Berbic - Zlatko Cosic - Sejla Kameric
Margareta Kern - Damir Niksic - Nebojsa Seric Shoba

Curated by Jeffrey Hughes and Dana Turkovic

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery is pleased to present Odavde/Otuda (from here/from there): An International Exhibition of Contemporary Bosnian Artists. This exhibition will be an opportunity to engage the St. Louis public in a dialogue addressing the Bosnia-Herzegovina diaspora and will include works by seven contemporary artists born in Bosnia, including representatives of those who emigrated as a result of the Bosnian War (1992-1995). To date, about 50,000 Bosnians settled in the St. Louis area in the 1990s after the war in the former Yugoslavia and is thought to be the largest outside of Bosnia. The exhibition brings together work by artists who incorporate issues of individual and group identity, land and politics, the laws of art and war, tradition, belonging and place. An exhibition of this nature is particularly pertinent as a means to examine and emphasize the important contributions made to the broader fabric of St. Louis cultural life by the local Bosnian community. Odavde/Otuda will also aim to not only bridge a gap but open a door of consideration on an important new community in St. Louis of people rebuilding their lives in the aftermath of one of the twentieth century's most brutal conflicts. One way to better serve this community is to understand its culture and religion through the work of these international artists, as the events of the war are undoubtedly now part of the history of the city of St. Louis.

We are indebted to the Arthur and Helen Baer Charitable Foundation for its major financial support for this exhibition. Our thanks also go to the Whitaker Foundation, the Missouri Arts Council, and the Regional Arts Commission for their generous support.

Odavde/Otuda Catalog

Enshroud
January 18 – February 1, 2008

Part 1: Cecille R. Hunt Gallery
Part 2: Snowflake/Citystock

The Cecille R. Hunt Gallery and Snowflake/Citystock are pleased to present Enshroud, an exhibition organized by students in Webster University’s Introduction to Curatorial Studies course. This exhibition brings you a commentary on the current state of the university’s “private collection” of art, whereas by using two separate venues, the installations are to be viewed as a balanced diptych. As part of the practical element of the course, Enshroud was developed from a discussion about the continued relevance of Walter Benjamin’s writing from 1935: “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” resulting in a dialogue about this collection and a means in which to present it. Enshroud is named as such given much of the collection is in storage and is “hidden”, “covered” or “concealed” from public view. Using a violent subtext, the deconstructed installation of a selection of works from Webster’s collection in the Hunt Gallery, presents this concept both physically and metaphorically as a “crime scene” with direct reference to Benjamin’s writing on a new stage of photography. “The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture.” Alternatively, the installation at Snowflake/Citystock directly refers to Benjamin’s concerns about the withering away of the “aura” of an artwork: “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” By presenting the ambience of a “wake” and using photographic reproductions of chosen work from the collection with pieces by artist’s such as David Hockney, Tim Rollins and Georges Braque, among others, Enshroud is pointing directly to the absence of the work while simultaneously comparing it to the loss of a human “soul” and what was a “unique existence”.

This exhibition has been organized as a practical element of the Introduction to Curatorial Studies course at Webster University in which students were encouraged to explore alternative processes and approaches to curating as an artistic, social and critical activity and as part of group collaboration.