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10/21/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/21/2024 14:23

BU Talent on Display in Venice, Italy, Exhibitions

BU Talent on Display in Venice, Italy, Exhibitions

Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale is the world's longest running arts and architecture festival. This year's festivities began in April and will conclude in November. Photo by Giuseppe Anello/Alamy Stock Photo

Arts & Culture

BU Talent on Display in Venice, Italy, Exhibitions

CFA alums, faculty, and students are exhibiting alongside Venice Biennale, world's longest running arts and architecture festival

October 21, 2024
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Every year, Venice, Italy, lights up with artists and luminaries. They flood the narrow streets, weaving in and out of galleries and pavilions, taking in the most pioneering, intricate, and stunning art the world has to offer. It's the Venice Biennale, the world's oldest arts and architecture festival, and also one of the world's most respected celebrations of creative genius. The festival switches off yearly, exhibiting the world's artists one year and architects the next-and 2024 is an art year, which means that for months The Floating City has been awash with artists, dancers, musicians, thespians, and filmmakers (the Venice International Film Festival, organized by the Biennale, is also the oldest of its kind in the world).

This year's massive art exhibition, held within the Giardini della Biennale, a parkland area in Venice, offers visitors a chance to see haunting installations in the German pavilion, vividly-colored handcrafts in the American pavilion, a collision of ancient and modern aesthetics in the Chinese pavilion. Outside the Giardini, dozens of galleries and pop-up shows proffer art events of their own, turning the entire city into one sprawling, moveable feast.

Among the local exhibitors is the A Plus A Gallery-a 1.5-mile boat trip from the Giardini. Inside are two concurrent exhibitions, each offering the international community a chance to view art by members of BU's visual arts community, through November 3.

"It's the second year we've had a Venice exhibition up at the same time as the Biennale," says Lissa Cramer (MET'18), director of BU Art Galleries. "It's a great time to be an art lover in Venice."

The first of the two shows, Hidden in the Layers, is an exhibition celebrating Charles Suggs (CFA'20) and College of Fine Arts faculty in the School of Visual Arts. The second, Atlantic Exchange, is a selection of more than 20 works across artistic disciplines, created by 14 CFA students and participants in the University's Study Abroad Venice Studio Arts program. Students submitted prints, drawings, paintings, and graphic design thesis books that represented their respective studies at CFA and time spent in the study-abroad program. The show was created in partnership with Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia and curated by Giovanni Turria, a professor at the Accademia, and his student Carolina Savio.

"The [Venice study abroad] program provides undergraduate art and design students the exceptional opportunity to develop their practices in a city where art, art history, and history are ubiquitously manifest," Marc Schepens (CFA'12), a painter, School of Visual Arts director, and a senior lecturer in art, says in a statement.

Hidden in the Layers is a celebration of the school's print media and photography program, with faculty members Lynne Allen, a CFA professor of art and chair of the program, Deborah Cornell, a CFA professor of art and head of printmaking, and Toni Pepe, a CFA assistant professor of art and head of photography, each submitting one work to the show.

Print media works by CFA lecturer Joshua Brennan during their installation in the A Plus A Gallery in Venice. Photo by Lissa Cramer

The stars of the exhibition are Joshua Brennan, a CFA lecturer in printmaking and a technical associate in printmaking and photography, and Suggs, whose prints are created primarily using woodcut and monotype. Both artists have contributed a starkly contrasting arrangement of recent work-yet Cramer, who curated the show alongside Stacy McKenna (MET'21), CFA associate director for strategic initiatives, sought to draw out the conversational threads among each contribution.

"Each artist has a wildly varying practice from the next: Josh and Deborah lean towards abstraction while Charles, Toni, and Lynne use figural imagery," McKenna explains. "The common thread that ties them all together is in the layers-both metaphorically and literally. Each work carries layers of meaning, thought, and critique, and the prints and photographs consist of print and paint layers."

Suggs was the first artist who came to mind when Cramer began curating the exhibition. The decision was easy, she recalls. "I did a studio visit with Charles while he was a student here [and] his work was stuck in my brain," she says. "I was just waiting for the perfect moment to circle back to him."

The recent CFA graduate favors neutral palettes for his lucid, confrontational prints. Works in his Body Stare series adorn one wall of the gallery, a lineup of figures thickly rendered in blacks and browns that stare down the viewer with piercing eyes-an unmistakable challenge.

"In relation to the gaze, staring can feel accusatory and threatening," he explains. "These figures stare back at the viewer with stressed, marked bodies that can be read as anxiety."

Monotype prints in Charles Suggs' Body Stare series are on view at the School of Visual Art's Hidden in the Layers exhibition. Photos courtesy of Charles Suggs

The Biennale is the first time Suggs is showing work internationally. It's been a long journey for him, and it's somewhat fitting to be back among old mentors. "Deborah Cornell and Josh Brennan were extremely influential to me during my time at BU," he says, "and it's due to them that I started working with monotypes and relief prints."

Brennan's work, meanwhile, could not be more different from that of his former student. In contrast with Suggs' subtle coloration, his work is a carnival of bright hues, a jumble of shapes and boldly intersecting lines that begin as inkjet prints on polyester he then augments with acrylic paint.

"For this show, I've developed a new body of work called Abyssal Palimpsest, which is meant to evoke a 'ruined vista'-part beautiful landscape, yet it withholds any fully recognizable forms," he says. There's a constant interplay between what is visible and what is obscured, inviting viewers to question the boundaries of the image."

There's also a strong sense of play in Brennan's work, which is evident in a process that stresses experimentation and iteration. He compares it to using a coloring book. "I distill simplified forms of my drawings, prints, and paintings into book format, and I then draw additional imagery onto the pages using crayons, pencils, and markers," he says. "These new compositions are digitized and reintroduced into the process…before they evolve into new variations."

Suggs, who also draws, paints, and creates videos, is grounded by more terrestrial concerns: injustice, abuse, and societal neglect.

"I research people who are considered 'invisible,'" he writes in his artist statement. "I find surprising facets, buried away either purposefully or neglected in time through indifference, [and] I revisit these erased moments and compare how they relate to the discourse of today."

Suggs is planning a trip to Venice to view the show, as is Brennan, who will visit toward the end of the Biennale to help remove his works from the gallery walls. McKenna and Cramer took in the festival earlier this month when they installed the show.

"The biennale is special every year, and it's always fun to see new works from all over the world," Cramer says. "Our School of Visual Arts alumni, staff, and faculty are such talented artists, and this is a great way for us to share their gifts with a wider audience."

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  • Sophie Yarin

    Associate Editor, BU Today; Managing Editor Bostonia

    Sophie Yarin is a BU Today associate editor and Bostonia managing editor. She graduated from Emerson College's journalism program and has experience in digital and print publications as a hybrid writer/editor. A lifelong fan of local art and music, she's constantly on the hunt for stories that shine light on Boston's unique creative communities. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her partner and their cats, Ringo and Xerxes, but she's usually out getting iced coffee. Profile

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