University Art Museum Opens Spring 2024 Season With Two Exhibitions

A paint-splattered woman can be seen swiping green and black paint across a canvas covered with boxes.
The University Art Museum at UAlbany’s spring season will feature two exhibitions, including “Body Maps,” about the relationship between the body and self. Above, a still from Kate Gilmore’s “A Ticket, A Tasket” video performance. (Photo provided)

By Bethany Bump

ALBANY, N.Y. (Jan. 18, 2024) — The University Art Museum at UAlbany will open its spring season with two exhibitions featuring works by artists who explore relationships between the body and self, and visual, mythological and scientific systems.

Body Maps: Works from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections in Conversation with Past Exhibiting Artists and Barrow Parke: Systems & Mythologies will be on view Jan. 22 through April 3. The artworks can be seen during museum hours, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., as well as on Saturday, March 9 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Body Maps

2nd Floor Main Gallery & Nancy Hyatt Liddle Gallery

In Body Maps, works by nine artists from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections are presented alongside eight contemporary artists who’ve had previous exhibitions at the museum. All explore the intimate connection between the body and the self through video, photography, painting, printmaking and sculpture.

An oil painting in shades of blue shows a man in a button down, jeans and a belt posing with hands on hips
Keltie Ferris’ “Rider” (2022) is on view in the Body Maps exhibition. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York)

In many cases, the artist’s own body is the subject of the work, and is presented as fragments and traces. Performances and feats of physical endurance are documented through video and photograph, and bodily surfaces are translated into casts and 3D-printed forms. In some cases, the artist’s body is also a medium and material — the very thing they manipulate and explore, often in the privacy of the artist’s studio.

Artists from the Fine Art Collections whose work will be on view in this exhibition include Robert Rauschenberg, Marisol, Vito Acconci, Andreas Feininger, Richard Garrison, Daesha Devón Harris, Allan Kaprow, Robert Morris and Andy Warhol.

Past exhibiting artists on view include Keltie Ferris, Kate Gilmore, Gracelee Lawrence, Pope.L, Ronny Quevedo, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Carrie Schneider and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Barrow Parke: Systems & Mythologies

1st Floor Main Gallery

Barrow Parke: Systems & Mythologies, the first solo exhibition by artistic duo and married couple Mark Barrow and Sarah Parke, returns for the spring semester after making its debut at the University Art Museum last fall.

The exhibition, which features newly commissioned textile paintings and earlier work by the couple, shows how the craft of weaving can be used as a framework for thinking about systems, such as those found in the sciences.

In Shapes in Time (2022), woven and embroidered trees are juxtaposed with painted numbers appearing like computer code — conjuring associations between natural root systems, “root directories” in computer science, and the numbered shafts and pedals of the loom used to handweave the fabric itself.
Barrow Parke’s “Shapes in Time” (2022) (Photo courtesy of the artists and JDJ, New York and Garrison)

In Shapes in Time (2022), for example, woven and embroidered trees are juxtaposed with painted numbers appearing like computer code — conjuring associations between natural root systems, “root directories” in computer science, and the numbered shafts and pedals of the loom used to weave the fabric itself.

The exhibition also features a newly commissioned piece that covers an entire arched bay of four floor-to-ceiling double windows and appears as stained glass but is really a luminous translation of graph paper woven into a grid of translucent red, green, blue and black vinyl squares.

In March, the museum will release a fully illustrated, color catalogue of Barrow Parke: Systems & Mythologies, featuring two scholarly essays by UAM associate curator Robert R. Shane and art critic and professor Dr. Zoe Stillpass contextualizing Barrow Parke’s work.

Also on view

Also on view at the museum this semester is Introphantasm, an exhibition looking at the relationships between personal and cultural memory and history, and how those relationships can play a role in one’s daily consciousness.

The paintings, prints and videos in the exhibition were curated by Master of Fine Arts student Bella Burnett and feature artists from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections, including Pierre Alechinsky, Susan Erony, Gregory Graham, Aaron Holz, Stephanie Palazeke, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., and Carol Tansey.

They can be viewed in the Collections Study Space, open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.