Thu 10/3 @ 5pm
After closing for major renovations – including all-new walls – Ursuline College’s Wasmer Gallery re-opens with the work of Thomas Salomon. In Memoriam: Responses to the Unanswerable represents an “attempt to memorialize through abstraction the cruel events of 1933-45 Holocaust in Europe,” Salomon says. “The work represents the culmination of my 47-year career in art. It is…so to speak…my ‘Guernica.’
“It involves mixed media installations from floor to ceiling as well as wall pieces on canvas, drop cloths, shrouds and paper. Utilizing language, literature, poetry, history, religion and mysticism, this work weaves its way through the period, selecting names, dates and places using a wide range of images and materials to portray a specific event.
“A specific event, the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Resistance, is represented by five large works alone. The backgrounds are black papers, cloths and boards with white type in oil stick. The artistic influence is the graffiti art of Basquiat, the materials and the concepts from Rauschenberg. The emotional tone and compositional matrix are my own. Hopefully, the story line succeeds as well.”
Wasmer Gallery director Anna Arnold says, “We are honored to bring Thomas Salomon’s profound work to Ursuline College. Thomas Salomon is an extraordinary artist in many ways. He has created an astounding body of work that is passionate and spontaneous and pursued a style and way of thinking about art that has to be as yet to be acknowledged in Cleveland. Art for him has been a way of life and survival. This is powerful work that needs to be experienced. I believe visitors will be astonished by the skill, ambition and diversity of the artworks in this show.”
Salomon commissioned Rhonda Harrell to compose a choral hymnal based on a Negro spiritual that will be performed during the opening reception at the gallery at 7:00 PM. Mr. Saloman will give a gallery talk from 2 PM – 4 PM Saturday, October 12. The exhibition will promote symposiums, lectures and interdisciplinary scholarship through Ursuline College’s Humanities Division.
The exhibition and all related events are FREE and open to the public. Exhibition runs through November 7th. Additional Hours: Tuesdays-Fridays Noon-5pm, Saturdays and Sundays 1:30-4:30pm.