Bannister Gallery 2017-18 Exhibitions

Rhode Island College 2-D Faculty Exhibition 

• August 31–September 22, 2017 

The Bannister Gallery starts off the fall 2017 season with the Annual Faculty Exhibition, which offers an opportunity for the community to experience first-hand the artistic talent that is in residence at Rhode Island College. These faculty artists are integral to the current aesthetic and conceptual dialogues present in our studio art department. Their practices include research-based and interdisciplinary methods that are at the core of contemporary art. RIC’s faculty artists exhibit widely and receive prestigious awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies. As a result, they encourage students by their example to think across boundaries. Collectively, these distinguished, award-winning artists bring a unique vision to the region’s cultural tapestry.

FOREVER FORNEVER 

• October 5–27, 2017
• Opening Reception: Thursday, October 5, 5–8 pm 

Curated by Chris Romero and Rhode Island College professor of digital media Frank WANG Yefeng, this exhibition features the work of Morehshin Allahyari, Jacob Ciocci, Kenta Cobayashi, Terrell Davis, exonemo, Miao Ying, Akihiko Taniguchi, and Lu Yang.

The online component of the exhibition (no longer live) features work by Ololade Adeniyi, Miyu Hosoi, Mushbuh, Rei Nakanishi, Mani Nilchiani, Sarah Rothberg, Nozomi Teranishi, Yaloopop, and Wang Yefeng.

The real and virtual are no longer separate. Technological advancements have become so embedded in our daily lives that we often cannot separate our digital personas from our physical bodies. Meanwhile, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence systems replace human functionality, Facebook algorithms dictate our news and information, and virtual worlds imitate reality, with a tinge of fantasy. With virtual reality, 3D printing, and augmented reality we no longer debate how the real and virtual are separate, we wonder how to move forward.

We have entered a new world. The speed at which it progresses presents a contradiction. Moments are both memorable and forgotten. This is found in trying to remember older versions of Facebook, or what life was like before it. At the same time the media we use can reunite distant friends or obliterate any history of former lovers. We exist paradoxically forever and fornever. The selected artists of this exhibition interpret the new world, their artworks portray the present, a hyper-technological world, and hypothesize the future - a dream caught between utopia and nightmare.

Additional artists will contribute to Forever Fornever through an online exhibition, presented via a screening room in the Bannister Gallery. The online exhibition is in conjunction with The Wrong Biennale, an international digital art biennale founded in 2014. Featuring web-based works, the online addendum to Forever Fornever adds a temporal and ephemeral element to the physical exhibition.

Toby Sisson: “The Soul of All Color” 

• November 9–December 15, 2017 

“Toby Sisson’s encaustic paintings and monotypes are a visual saturation of abstract curves and ambiguous temporality. Her exhibition, The Soul of All Color, floods the eye with the stark possibility, cadence, and the fluid entanglements of black, white, and grey, that her art engenders. Abstraction assists the imagination by requiring something more of the viewer. In this, Sisson creates with and against the grain of the viewer’s expectation. Her art is figurative without figures, precise while playfully amorphous, lyrical and performative. 'I want to be able to make images that have multiple reads,' Sisson has said. And abstract multiplicity is the manner and mode of her aesthetic trajectory."

– Kimberly Juanita Brown, Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies, Mount Holyoke College and author of “The Repeating Body: Slavery’s Visual Resonance in the Contemporary,” Duke University Press, 2015

Dianne Reilly: “Memento Vestige” 

• January 25–February 23, 2018

RIC Associate Professor of Art - Metalsmithing Dianne Reilly’s most recent work is an exploration of time and memory: 

“I am looking at the internal and external landscapes of the body and the systems that make us who we are. These systems are comprised of connections that are fractal in nature that are continuously shifting, changing, and moving. When this complex system breaks down, many connections are lost, redirected, and reorganized. Time is understood in a way that disregards the present and reinvents the past. Shifting in and out of awareness of the moment. Fluctuating between the concrete and the tenuous until permanently falling away.”

Graphic Design: Konkuk University 

• March 1–23, 2018

Facilitated by Rhode Island College Graphic Design professor Heemong Kim, this exhibition will feature selected works form Graduating Graphic Design students’ studying at Konkuk University, Korea.   

The University’s objective is to develop creative designers aware of their role in society social responsibilities through the understanding of humans, society, technology, philosophy, and culture.

Caleb Cole: “Absence/Presence” 

• March 29–April 27, 2018

Boston-based, Indianapolis-born Caleb Cole exhibits a fascination with the junk that people leave behind. 

“From March 29 through April 27, Bannister’s exhibiting artist Caleb Cole will bring into sharp relief the objects we leave behind and their way of conjuring up memory and association. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Cole describes himself as a former altar server, scout and 4-H Grand Champion in Gift Wrapping whose mother instilled in him a love of garage sales and thrift stores where he developed a fascination with the 'junk' people leave behind.” – The Herald News, 2018

Rhode Island College Graduating Senior Exhibition 

• May 3–12, 2018 

The Bannister Gallery is pleased to present this annual senior thesis exhibition of graduating art majors. Varying in media from ceramics and metalsmithing to paintings, prints, digital media, graphic design, photography and sculpture, this exhibition represents the capstone of each student’s course of study at Rhode Island college. Degree recipients include BS in Art Education, BA and BFA in studio art, where students develop a thematically and conceptually focused body of work.