Fri 7/7 @ 5:30-8PM
This Friday, the Sculpture Center opens two new exhibits of the type that’s become a staple on their schedule: installations that address a welter of complicated ideas and concepts.
Pittsburgh’s Joshua Challen Ice describes himself on his website as “an emerging artist working in lighting manipulation, atmosphere design and sculpture, using site-specific immersive works to explore themes of manufactured nostalgia, involuntary introspection, and obsession with spectacle.”
His Sculpture Center show, called Secrets Are Pondered, Projects Prepared, looks at “the maintenance of self through the maintenance of architecture.” It’s based on a garage-style workshop that meticulously creates an illusion of disarray, addressing questions of DIY culture and self-care in an assemblage that incorporates high-tech lighting and video components.
Native Texan Kristy Hughes, whose career has taken her to Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts and Vermont, offers abstract sculptures called In Your Sunlit Hope, which consider ideas about empowerment, gratitude and potential for change. While she’s paying tribute to her own peripatetic past, the show also has grander ambitions as she says hr sculptures are “intended to deliberately push back against the white-supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchal, and classist societal systems that she works within.”
The free opening reception takes place Friday July 7 from 5:30-8pm, with artist talks from 6:30-7:15pm.