A new semester marks a long-awaited time for art enthusiasts in the Brandeis community—a new set of exhibits at the Rose Art Museum! For those of us who are new to Brandeis, the Rose should soon prove to be one of the highlights of our campus. Especially in recent years, following the installation of the Light of Reason, the Rose has served not only as a source of exceptional art, but also as a gathering place for students. As their website highlights, the Rose is “a laboratory for the exploration of art.” Whether you are well-versed in fine art or cannot differentiate between contemporary art and a toddler’s scrawlings, the Rose is the perfect place to go to any afternoon.
This semester boasts many exciting new exhibits created by leading artists around the globe. Conceptual and visual artist David Reed will be presented in the Gerald S. and Sandra Fineberg Gallery of the Rose, in an exhibit called “Painting Paintings” that visually represents the process of making art. “This exhibition reunites a small, starkly beautiful group of David Reed’s early brushstroke paintings, not seen together since they were first exhibited in New York City in 1975. Painted wet into wet, the canvases describe the painter and his tools, the reach of his arm and the physical nature of his materials,” says the museum’s exhibitions website.
The work of David Shrigley, a visual artist living and working in Scotland, will reside in the Lower Rose Gallery. “Life Model II” will put viewers to the test with a new spin; visitors are asked to interact with his exhibit that will repurpose a typical gallery space. “Scottish artist David Shrigley plays on the age-old tradition of life drawing classes, transforming the gallery into a classroom and viewers into participants. Visitors may sit, observe and draw from the artist’s caricatured sculpture of a nine-foot-tall woman,” says the site.
Sculpture artist Sarah Sze brings the mundane to grand scale; in her exhibit in the Lois Foster Gallery, Sze will produce a new installation tailored specifically to the space it will occupy. Sze was the United States representative for the Venice Biennale, the 55th International Art Exhibition, in 2013 and is sure to impress us with the work she creates. “Blurring the boundaries between sculpture, installation and painting, Sarah Sze builds intricate landscapes from the ordinary minutiae of everyday life, yet on a grand architectural scale,” says the site.
The final new exhibit to usher in Fall 2016 is a video presentation in the Rose Video Gallery. “Adventure: Capital” by Irish artist Sean Lynch will “[trace] an historical journey from myth to minimalism, unraveling notions of value and the flow of capital through an anthropological lens.” This semester’s video presentation, a staple of each semester’s exhibitions, draws on several fields of interest: anthropology, history, economics, politics and many more. With all the upcoming art exhibitions, the Rose has planned what is sure to be a lively semester of eclectic works.
