“Found on Facebook” at Manhattanville College

Video art, wood sculpture, found-item sculpture, photography, oil on canvas…. No, you're not in the Museum of Modern Art, but you're close: the Arthur M. Bergman Gallery at Manhattanville College in Purchase has opened its latest exhibit: "Found on Facebook."

Curator and creator of "Found on Facebook" Charles McGill has spent the past three months scouting for and collecting pieces for the exhibition, which will run from now until February 18^th.

"This idea came to me while I was surfing Facebook," McGill said. "I've always enjoyed looking through the art pages of friends, and friends of friends, who post their work. No one has done a show with this theme before, where the pieces reflect our connection through social networking."

McGill, an artist himself, is the director of the Arthur M. Bergman Gallery, and founder of ArtNegro.com. The exhibit features an original work by McGill, which he feels compliments the overall theme.

"I wanted to illustrate, with a showcase of different artists' original work, the ideology behind our culture of interpersonal and isolated communication." McGill added, "I selected these pieces for their subtle representation of the human figure, in terms of isolation, or presence, or lack thereof, of personal contact and interaction."

The "Found on Facebook" works are as different as the Facebook users who admire them on the "fan page," (a bit of Facebook lingo). The artists come from all over the world; some sent their work to McGill, based in New York, from as far as Greece.

"I basically had these pieces sent to me sight unseen: all I had to go on was the jpeg pictures on the web," explained McGill. "As the work came in, I formatted the layout of the gallery, and luckily, it seemed to work out."

One of the artists, Scott Kaylor, sent his creation, "Self-Portrait Cremation Urn," and described the inspiration behind it.

"The idea came inexplicably to me as a small child, when I was in a limbo state between wakefulness and sleep. I remember it many years later, at the age of 23, which is when I produced the bronze castings for this piece. [It] has been gradually moving towards completion ever since."

The "Found on Facebook" exhibition is currently open at the Arthur M. Berger Art Gallery at Manhattanville College in Purchase. The reception will be held on Wednesday, February 3^rd, from 5 to 7pm. The exhibition will close February 18^th. For more information, contact Charles McGill at: mcgillc@mville.edu.