Pace University Art Gallery Launches ‘Substance’

Pace University Art Gallery has launched the Substance exhibition and associated programs that include online artists’ talks, an artist residency, and a virtual exhibit – all culminating with an in-person exhibit in the fall 2021, the University announced today.

Substance brings together five abstract artists—Diego Anaya, Liz Atz, Linda Ekstrom, Adebunmi Gbadebo, and Alberto Lule—who express meaning via their materials rather than through representational imagery.

To celebrate the launch of the digital exhibit, at 6:30 p.m. on March 1, the Gallery will host a Zoom artist talk by Diego Anaya. Anaya’s work is minimalist in imagery, yet he celebrates his Mexican heritage through the use of ground corn, corn ash, and sand with which he creates rough and uneven surfaces. The texture compels the viewer to examine the work closely and even to want to touch and smell the granular surface, creating an immediate and intimate connection between the viewer and the artist.

From March 2-22, the Gallery will host a residency by Liz Atz during which she will create a large-scale window installation on-site. Made of mycelium mushroom-based plastics she casts herself, Atz’s bright, immersive installations critique commercialism, materialism, and consumption. During the three-week residency, Atz will experiment further with chitosan, a substance sourced from waste shell material from the shrimp, lobster and other shellfish industry, adding pigment, and laser cutting the installation. Atz will also give a Zoom talk about her work at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16.

Pace students, faculty and staff are invited to drop in to see the process in the gallery Tuesday through Thursday from 1p.m.-3p.m. or by appointment. The public will be able to see the process unfold via the window installation at 41 Park Row.

At 3 p.m. on March 10, the Gallery will present a Zoom artist lecture by Alberto Lule who critiques and exposes the prison industrial complex in America as a form of modern slavery. His Investigation series offers insight to his experience as a formerly incarcerated person by using fingerprint powder—a tool used by police to prove someone was at the scene of a crime—as his drawing material. Thereby, Lule reclaims his past, present, and future, stating that he isn’t at the mercy of the corrupt American prison system any longer.

The pre-launch included a Zoom lecture by Linda Ekstrom on Feb. 25. Ekstrom’s works from her Word series use text from religious sources as a form of inspiration and commentary. Many of her artworks are made from altered pages of the Bible, which is representative of how Ekstrom explores feminist issues, particularly within the role of Jewish and Christian religious history and tradition. Her work addresses the suppressed stories of women both in the Bible and throughout art history via the process of disassembling and then reassembling this book which has been used to inspire, divide, and control readers. Recordings of all Substance exhibit lectures will be available in the gallery’s Instagram bio at @paceuniversityartgallery.

Also included in the both the digital and in-person exhibits is artist Adebunmi Gbadebo who writes: “My material is human hair from people of the African Diaspora. Our hair is so connected to our culture, politics, and history!” She represents identity and history in Blues People by incorporating prints of historical documents onto paper embedded with Black hair. In so doing, she exposes the grim history of American slavery that has been erased by white-centric narratives and materials. In Black hair, she finds “a material and a history in which to root my own work that positions the people who looked like me as central to my practice.”

The Substance exhibit was curated by Sarah Cunningham, Art Gallery director/assistant clinical professor, with Samantha L. Smith, ‘21, gallery intern/research fellow, with support from the Provost’s Academic Year 2020-2021 Student-Faculty Undergraduate Research Award through the Center for Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE). The in-person exhibit has been re-scheduled for September 27-October 30, 2021.