Announcement

On Friday, December 7, Pieces Apart: Quantifying the Experience, a new exhibition developed by students at Emerson College, opens at the Huret & Spector Gallery on the Emerson campus. The exhibition features artwork from 11 student artists from BU, MassArt, and SMFA that explores the relationships between nature and industry by deconstructing traditional perspectives and piecing them back together differently.

The free exhibit is open to the public and will show through February 28, 2013 (closed for school break from December 16 through January 15). The gallery is located at the Tufte Performance and Production Center, 10 Boylston Place, Sixth Floor, Boston. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The opening reception on December 7 will take place from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Each year, Emerson students produce an exhibition as part of a hands-on course titled What Is Contemporary Art? During the semester, students learn the craft of curating a public, contemporary art exhibition—from finding artists and selecting works to developing a comprehensive theme and managing the installation.

“Curating an exhibition gives students an opportunity to articulate what makes their generation unique from past artists,” said Joseph Ketner, the Lois and Henry Foster chair in contemporary art theory and practice and distinguished curator-in-residence, who teaches the Visual and Media Arts class.

After spending time surveying modern and contemporary art, students visit graduate student studios to choose artists and create the show. Pieces Apart features selected artwork that complements the exhibition’s overarching theme—the dynamic interplay between the technological world and our physical environment.

“The tension that exists between the created and natural world provides for a rich area of investigation and stimulating thought,” said MassArt student Tyler Scheidt, whose painting, “Monument II,” includes geometric landscapes pieced together in fragments—“creating a world that is both familiar and strange.” Scheidt explains that his paintings are meant to represent a threshold space that hovers between the real and abstract.

Ketner explains that the class challenges students to think beyond what they like personally when choosing art for their exhibition, and to consider a number of factors including how they will display their selected artwork in a three-dimensional space, and what each piece brings to the exhibition’s theme to make it comprehensive for visitors. “I’m always excited to see the students’ visions come to life, and to invite the community to see a fully produced, contemporary exhibit from the next generation of artists.”

"Exploring art is a powerful way of trying to comprehend how we view ourselves in the world,” said Lane Brenner, a senior Communication Studies major in the class. “This class lets us interact with artists who are about the same age as us, to see how they view the world, and then to curate their artwork in an exhibit to reflect our interpretation. ”

Work from the following 11 artists will be displayed at the exhibition:

  • Luca Gaetano, BU
  • Nadia Afghani, MassArt
  • Tyler Scheidt, MassArt
  • Fabiola Menchelli, MassArt
  • Juan Travieso, SMFA
  • Lauren Coulson, SMFA
  • Neerja Kohtani, SMFA
  • Jenna de Luca, SMFA
  • Molly Segal, SMFA
  • P.T. Sullivan, SMFA
  • Alexander Squier, SMFA

About the College

Based in Boston, Massachusetts, opposite the historic Boston Common and in the heart of the city’s Theatre District, Emerson College educates individuals who will solve problems and change the world through engaged leadership in communication and the arts, a mission informed by liberal learning. The College has 3,780 undergraduates and 670 graduate students from across the United States and 50 countries. Supported by state-of-the-art facilities and a renowned faculty, students participate in more than 90 student organizations and performance groups. Emerson is known for its experiential learning programs in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, the Netherlands, London, China, and the Czech Republic as well as its new Global Portals, with the first opening last fall in Paris. The College has an active network of 51,000 alumni who hold leadership positions in communication and the arts. For more information, visit Emerson.edu.