Gallery Tour

Painting as Translation?: Conversation with the Artist

Thu, Sep 27, 2018

6:30 PM–8:00 PM

The James Gallery

Is painting translation? What is the connection of language and text to a material image? What is the role of language as dialogue in the visual arts—is a painting to be engaged with in silent contemplation or noisome conversation?

These apparently straightforward questions will begin a conversation around the works in the current exhibition that will demonstrate that they are not simple questions at all. Writer Eric Dean Wilson and painter Jen Mazza have been collaborators in teaching and writing and will continue this conversation that bridges their two practices by drawing on shared resources and inspiration. If, as Mazza asserts, it is the viewer who puts in motion the sedimented time and the developing meaning that exists in a painting, how can the collective dialogue of the gallery walkthrough make unexpected meanings as we approach the paintings with our bodies and with a play of words.