Amy Hauft: Counter Re-formation
Artist’s Talk Wednesday, December 2, 6 pm
Anderson Gallery, 907½ West Franklin Street
Amy Hauft, chair of the VCUarts’ Department of Sculpture + Extended Media, combines shifts in scale and perspective, the arcane craft of sculpting sugar, and art historical references to create an engrossing perceptual experience for viewers of her new installation. The scale and form of Hauft’s massive 30-foot-long structure derive from an 18th-century Louis XIV banquet table, made even more ornate by a giant spiral radiating from a central vortex that appears in one corner. Cast-sugar sculptures, mimicking the look of porcelain, once adorned these royal tables as demonstrations of conspicuous consumption. Hauft’s intricate sugar replica of a miniature spiral staircase becomes instead the central feature in a snowy landscape covering the table’s expanse. While this panorama is difficult to view in its entirety at ground level, an actual staircase installed at one end of the gallery offers an overhead view. This project was made possible by generous support from the Office of the Dean, VCU School of the Arts, and the James W. and Lois I. Richmond Center Visual Arts, Western Michigan University, Kalmazoo, where the installation was seen earlier this fall
Francis Cape: Home Front
Artist’s Talk Wednesday, November 18, 12:15 pm
VCU Commons Theater, 907 Floyd Avenue
Francis Cape pairs impeccably built sculptures with architectural elements and photographic images in each of the three installations making up this exhibition. These works expand on a project that Cape initially developed for last year’s biennial, Prospect.1 New Orleans. Also included is another recent piece that grew out of his experiences as a post-Katrina disaster-relief worker. Cape addresses a host of complex issues relating not just to New Orleans but to a general cycle of American production and consumption, and the legacy of modernist debates surrounding utility and ornamentation, social idealism and mass consumerism. With this body of work, he asks: how can we re-imagine forms and models of production in response to both historical precendent and current disaster? Co-sponsored by the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media.
The Anderson Gallery 