Currents, the Colby College Museum of Art's annual emerging artist series, takes place every fall in the Museum.
The series presents solo-exhibitions by artists with a connection to the state of Maine in the Museum’s Davis Gallery with an accompanying publication and public lecture by the artist. Each exhibition provides a unique opportunity to view cutting-edge art by some of today’s most exciting emerging artists. In an effort to broaden the exposure of our audiences to artists pushing the boundaries of traditional art forms, special attention is given, but not limited, to artists working in art forms such as video, installation, performance, and site-specific works.
t s Beall
Landing Sequence from Predator UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), Iraq, 2004
Video still
Currents5: t s Beall
October 9, 2008 - February 1, 2009
DAVIS GALLERY
In the fifth installment of currents, an annual solo exhibition dedicated to the work of an emerging artist with connections to Maine, the Colby College Museum of Art presents Here Be Dragons (2008), a new video installation by t s Beall, an American artist living in Glasgow who attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2003. The exhibition consists of a single watchtower surmounted by a rotating platform outfitted with video projectors. From it, circular, scope-like video sequences of landscape imagery drawn from desolate outposts and contested areas are projected onto the walls of the gallery.
10,080 acrylic-painted wooden circles, 18 receptacles, 16 color keys, Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm, instructions, tape, audience, 45 x 14'. Photo: Alan LaVallee
currents4: Amy Stacey Curtis
December 15, 2007 - April 13, 2008
DAVIS GALLERY
Curated by Sharon Corwin, Carolyn Muzzy Director and Chief Curator
The fourth installment of the Museum's annual emerging- artist exhibition, currents, presents work by Maine-based installation artist Amy Stacey Curtis. Curtis, who has been working in abandoned industrial sites throughout the state for the past seven years, creates interactive works that examine our interconnectedness through themes of chaos, order, and repetition. For currents4, Curtis invites viewers to perceive, manipulate, and perpetuate her exploration of light and color.
Lihua Lei
Phantom Pain (detail), 2006
Installation in three parts. Photo: Alan LaVallee
currents3: Lihua Lei
November 16, 2006 - February 4, 2007
DAVIS GALLERY
Curated by Sharon Corwin, Carolyn Muzzy Director and Chief Curator and Gregory Williams, Assistant Director for Operations
Lihua Lei's work explores the sense of bounty and loss inherent to our bodily condition. Working in the gap between the figurative and the abstract, Lei uses diverse materials to allude to the body: a pool of carnelian colored thread suggests blood; a tube of cloth winds through the landscape like an esophagus or a birthing canal; a tree's knotty irregularities imply scars, burns, or tumors upon a torso. For currents3, Lei explores memory as a bodily phenomenon, exemplified by the phantom limb. How does our body remember, or feel, what it has lost? Lei's installation invites the viewer to reflect upon the vulnerabilities and transformations of the body.
Exhibition catalogue available.
Sam Van Aken
01:15:39:22, 2005, 2005
Multimedia installation, variable dimensions
currents2: Sam Van Aken
November 20, 2005 - February 12, 2006
DAVIS GALLERY
Curated by Sharon Corwin, Carolyn Muzzy Director and Chief Curator
In Colby's second annual emerging artist exhibition, currents2, installation artist and University of Maine Professor of Art Sam Van Aken creates a multimedia installation exploring his personal and artistic engagement with the 1977 Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Julianne Swartz
Higher View, 2004
PVC pipe, plexiglass, mirror, hardware, 33 x 7 x 32"
currents1: Julianne Swartz
October 28, 2004 - February 6, 2005
DAVIS GALLERY
Curated by Sharon Corwin, Carolyn Muzzy Director and Chief Curator
Julianne Swartz, a New York-based artist whose work was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, uses light and sound to explore the thresholds of perception. Her installations challenge the viewer to see and hear elements in the environment that previously may have gone unnoticed.
