📅 Exhibition Dates: May 20 – Aug 9
📍 Location: Central Campus, Parr Center, Dove Art Gallery
‘Forever Transient’ visually investigates the meaning behind transience, impermanence, continuous change, and the desire to preserve and prolong the temporary moment. Inspired by Dutch still life paintings and vanitas, each artist showcases a unique approach to artistically rendering the fragility of time. This exhibition reminds us that time is cyclical, not linear, continuously marching forward while reflecting on the past.
This exhibit features 8 nationally and internationally acclaimed artists, each incorporating vibrant references to nature and humanity through various creative processes:
- Andrew Leventis: Hyper-realistic refrigerator still life paintings, updating classic Dutch techniques with a contemporary twist.
- Brent Dedas: “Honeybee drawings” that use live honeybees to create cyanotype prints.
- Colby Caldwell: Uses a flatbed scanner on nature walks to scan natural flora, capturing the transient beauty of the forest floor.
- James Henkel: Arranges fragments of glass from destroyed vessels to create organic shapes, showing transience through destruction and reformation.
- Susan Jedrzejewski: Explores the unpredictable patterns of nature through photo transfers on canvas and panel.
- Debra Koo: Paintings that preserve moments of social celebrations, family gatherings, and the abundance of food.
- Desiree Thomas: Transforms ordinary food items like spam and packaged chips into extraordinary art, often set against blue sky backgrounds.
- Kenny Nguyen: Honors his Vietnamese and American heritage using paint and Vietnamese silk in organic and abstract forms.
- Jennifer Minnis: Captures humanity in spirit, mind, and body, causing viewers to question the thoughtful intentions of the portrayed subjects.
Quote from the Group:
“Whether skillfully rendering mundane routines, reimagining a personal archive, or concentrating on the minute details of a moment already gone, these artists bring to life something as connected to the temporary as it is to the everlasting. The small becomes the meaningful, the part becomes a whole. It is not the need for retrospection, but the will to render the complicated nuances of time, memory, and fragility that give this collection of works its power. It is within these elapsed moments that the painting lives and continues to evolve, forever.”
Join us for this thought-provoking exhibition and explore the intricate dance between the temporary and the everlasting. 🌟