APPLETON, WIS. — An opening reception and lecture for the next exhibition at the Wriston Art Center galleries takes place at 6:00 p.m. January 19. Michelle Grabner, who will exhibit Mid-Career Retrospective in the Hoffmaster and Kohler galleries, will give the opening lecture. The Leech Gallery will feature recent acquisitions.
Grabner, an artist, professor, art critic, and curator, has had one-person exhibitions in London, Melbourne, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Chicago. This exhibition, organized by University Galleries, College of Fine Arts, Illinois State University, Normal, and supported in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, will represent her first large-scale solo museum survey.
The spare minimalism of Grabner’s works is actually an ongoing and complex response to the material world of everyday life. Some of her early works were derived from some of the most common objects found in domestic interiors. The patterns on rugs, colanders, produce bags, and bedspreads were meticulously stenciled onto canvas and panel and then painted by hand with enamel or flocking. In later works, Grabner investigates the illusory and ever-changing refraction of light in rainbows and the natural diffraction of reflective surfaces. Through the last 10 years, all of Grabner’s works have been precise and seemingly obsessive interpretations of common phenomena, filtered through a careful and subtly changing vision.
Included in the recent acquisitions exhibition at the Leech Gallery are two 20th century Japanese woodblock prints, a Thomas Dietrich watercolor painting, a painting by the American Surrealist Walter Quirt, executed in 1947, a sculpture by contemporary artist Ronald Gonzalez and a piece of Native American pottery from the southwest.
These exhibitions will be on display through March 11. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday, noon-4:00 p.m.
