Humanism, individualization, and equality are all abstract ideas, but there's a gallery that makes these concepts concrete and aesthetically pleasing.
UB Anderson Gallery is hosting the Print Review, an exhibit that featured the work of three Buffalo-affiliated printmakers - renowned artist Chunwoo Nam, UB professorHarold L. Cohen, and Buffalo Print Club founder Kevin B. O'Callahan.
Nam, an MFA graduate from UB and assistant professor of printmaking at the Herron School of Arts and Design in Indianapolis, Ind., used his work to show his liberal views. Nam uses lithographic imaging and installation pieces to speak out against the inequalities of a globalizing world.
"Global society is not a village where people amicably live together, but a playground of a few global players in their course of making profits and fostering their distinctive social taste," Nam said. "Marginalized people are brutally excluded by their own legal boundary of citizenship."
Nam's 2010 piece, "I Am Here," is an installation of 108 lithographs that stretch well over 30 feet. The sprawling, repeated ghostly outline of a figure stands alone in a city of advertising image, representing the idea of the endangerment of identity.
Cohen - artist, Dean Emeritus,and professor in the School of Architecture and Planning - also focuses on elements of humanity and equality in his work. He holds the belief that design can change the world.
"We can remake our cities into environments which will discourage the bestial qualities of men and women and reinforce the humane and decent characteristics we expect from a civilized society," Cohen said. "We can support the necessary behaviors required to train our next generation so that they will come to see the whole problem and not merely the economic factors."
Cohen's "Inalienable Rights"(2008) uses dry point, a type of engraving that requires the use of a sharply pointed instrument on a copperplate. Working in a medium most would be unable to master, Cohen not only succeeds in this exquisite rendering of five women in full garb learning to read - he triumphs.
Cohen also used other techniques in his creations, including etching, woodcut, linocut, collagraph, and drawing.
"What I really like about this exhibit is it touches on the process of lithography and printmaking where it not only has the prints, but the actual plates and etchings that are used to create the finished lithograph," said Jim Snider, UB Anderson Gallery's staff assistant.
O'Callahan had a more abstract approach to his work. He paid particular attention to details of form and structure in his work, creating mechanical scenes from Buffalo's industrial waterfront and geometrically precise images of shipbuilding from Thomaston, Maine.
"Ship's Skeleton"(1940), his wood-engraved illustration, is created from the perspective of an off-kilter angle in the bowels of an unfinished, framed boat. Martin Pops, a UB English professor, praised the vagueness of this vantage point.
"We are trapped in a confusion of visual ambiguity without a satisfactory point of view in a workspace unmoored to any discernible world beyond it," Pops said.
The UB Anderson Gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and this exhibit will be displayed until May 27.
Email: arts@ubspectrum.com
