Artists Van Aken, Warren Exhibit at UMaine Carnegie Galleries
Contact: MaJo Keleshian, (207) 581-3267, George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO — How Hollywood shapes visions of reality and concerns about technology’s waste materials are themes of new exhibits in mixed media and sculpture by UMaine artist Sam Van Aken and sculptor Wally Warren at the University of Maine Department of Art’s Carnegie Galleries
The show runs from Feb. 11 through March 18. The public is invited.
Both artists work with many of the same materials — computers for example — but in different ways. Van Aken uses computers to show how media can manipulate fact and fiction. Warren employs discarded computer parts in his sprawling landscapes.
In Van Aken’s “Becoming” in Gallery I, the assistant professor of art has taken on the role of Roy Neary, the character played by Richard Dreyfuss in the film “Close Encounters.”
Exploring the impact of Hollywood on shaping our reality while dealing with such themes as artistic vision and obsession, Van Aken will reconstruct the living room scene from the movie, and during the time of the exhibit, he will build the replica of Devil’s Tower in character Roy Neary’s vision.
Van Aken has had solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Other recent exhibits have included “Hybrids,” an exhibit of hundreds of invented hybrid fruits made from plastic, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, “The Multiple Deaths of Willem Dafoe,” at the Maine Center for Contemporary Art in Rockport and “In Between,” which used 350 speakers to broadcast layers of voices from footage taken after the World Trade Center attacks or from TV shows shouting, “Oh, my God!” to illustrate the difficulty in separating fact from fiction and the real from the imaginary, as portrayed through the media.
In Carnegie’s Gallery II, Warren’s exhibit “Chaos” comprises a number of the artist’s “cities” as well as sculptures, notebooks and working papers.
“Technology has unleashed a multitude of ‘raw material’ for my use,” says Warren, an artist-sculptor from Harmony. “Discarded computers, televisions and plastic toys have become key elements for my microcosms of our sprawling landscape. It’s ongoing and growing as my work becomes a metaphor for the ‘stuff’ that pours from our techno-culture, even as I am repulsed by the same material culture. It overwhelms me, and I cannot deal with it other than as an artist, a builder.”
Warren has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. His most recent exhibit was at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, and he has done many Percent for Art public works throughout the state.
For more information, please contact MaJo Keleshian, gallery coordinator, University of Maine, Department of Art, at (207) 581-3267.