FAU Presents Over 20 Contemporary Artists in "Delicatessen"
BOCA RATON (June 1, 2007) - The University Galleries in Florida Atlantic University's School of the Arts will present "Delicatessen," an exhibition featuring over 20 contemporary artists, from November 9, 2007 -January 26, 2008 in the Schmidt Center Gallery on FAU's Boca Raton campus, 777 Glades Road. The exhibition was conceived and selected by guest curator Diana Shpungin, an artist and graduate of FAU's Bachelor of Fine Arts program. Shpungin also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and teaches as an adjunct professor in FAU's department of visual arts and art history. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
"Delicatessen" will include works in painting, sculpture, photography and video. Artists in the exhibition range from highly recognized, internationally known artists like Felix Gonzales-Torres, Roxy Paine and Jim Hodges, to emerging artists such as recent Art Institute of Chicago MFA graduate Andrew Ross and Miami-based Cristina Lei-Rodriguez. Other exhibition artists are winners of recent prestigious international awards, including Shazia Sikander, who was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as the "genius award," and Boyce Cummings, who is a recent recipient of the Rome Prize, a prize awarded annually by the American Academy in Rome.
The works of the artists chosen for "Delicatessen" explore a broad range of artistic approaches and subject matter but all embody an identifiable though elusive sensibility in contemporary art making. This interpretive or poetic theme is identified as "Delicatessen." Each artist works with a material, subject matter or concept often construed as traditionally beautiful, campy, kitsch, mundane, saccharine, sentimental, grotesque, dark or menacing. They play with and transform these associations through repetitive accumulation, strange juxtapositions and/or inventive assemblage. Through these methods, the artists challenge the connotations of the mundane material or subject, walking a delicate line that transforms their work into something more potent, more engaging and even sublimely beautiful.
Just as the artists in this exhibition recast their subjects and material, the exhibition recoins the word delicatessen by bringing it back to its Latin roots and claiming a more poetic meaning for it. The Latin root delicatus, with the meaning "giving pleasure, delightful," relates to beauty rather than commerce. The exhibition, "Delicatessen," challenges the somewhat utilitarian connotation of the word through the delicate sensibility that dominates the array of work it features.
Several of the artists will visit FAU to install their works and participate in the department of visual arts and art history undergraduate and graduate critiques, give presentations to students and present public lecture and gallery talks at and around the time of the exhibition opening. One artist will be invited to create a new work for the exhibition in the Schmidt Center Gallery Public Space, a 22-foot tall x 200-foot long corridor lobby space that has hosted several site-specific installations. The Schmidt Center Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 1-4p.m. and Saturday 1-5p.m. Class and group tours can be arranged during these or other hours by appointment. University Galleries pro_grams are made possible in part by the State of Florida Department of State Division of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts; The Palm Beach County Cultural Council; The RA. Ritter Foundation; F AU Student Government through student activity fees; and individual contributors to the University Galleries.