Murray State's new Clara Eagle Gallery Director Mike Martin kicks off his first semester curating the four campus galleries with works including 'Anthropogenic Landscapes' by Armin Muhsam, Paintings/Drawings/Sculptures depicting "Silver Linings" by Adrian Hatfield, 'AIR of UT' featuring works by professors and alumni at UT Knoxville and 'My Home' large-scale photos of interiors by Louis Chan. Martin brings artists Hatfield and Chan to Sounds Good to speak with Kate Lochte about their work.
Louis Chan's large photos of interiors titled "My Home" brightens up the Curris Center Gallery, featuring spaces and homes he grew up living around in Manhattan's Lower East Side as the son of Chinese immigrants living in the American experience. In the photos, you'll see people's personalities, what they choose to possess and what they hold dear to themselves, Chan says. You see a variety of economic classes and how they negotiate the experience.
Chan's work is on display until September 15.
Adrian Hatfield's work on display in Paintings/Drawings/Sculptures deals with the wonderment of the natural, biological world and the way people have dealt with that sense of wonder throughout time in science, art and religion, he says. His work recombines those mediums of expression so that they don't work as adversaries but as strange, awkward and poignant works.
Some of his newer work shows dismay over environmental issues, Hatfield says, the idea that the sixth mass extinction is underway, caused by human activity. He says the title "Silver Lining" is from the explosion of life that comes after a mass extinction. He looks back at historical paintings from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as a foundation and recombines them into something a little disturbing, grotesquely playful and strangely hopeful.
Hatfield's work is on display through September 23.
Clara Eagle Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday or by appointment.
More about University Galleries and the full Exhibition Prospectus
