Three new art exhibitions will have opening receptions at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 22 at New Mexico State University's Art Museum. The events are free and open to the public and will run through Sept. 16, 2023.
"Cara Despain: Specter,"on view in the UAM's Contemporary Gallery, is an immersive multimedia exhibition featuring work by Miami-based artist Cara Despain. Using sculptural and video-based installations created with found objects and archival film from the 1940s-60s, Despain explores the irreversible environmental consequences and hidden psychological and microscopic health effects left in the wake of nuclear weapons development and testing across the Southwest.
"Agnes Martin & Karen Yank: Meditations on Mentor and Student" will be on display in the Bunny Conlon Modern & Contemporary Art Gallery. This exhibition explores the work and intersecting lives of the artists Agnes Martin and Karen Yank. For nearly 17 years, Yank and Martin met weekly as a friendship and mentorship flourished. Featured in this exhibition are a selection of Martin's lithographs on vellum, whose complex and meditative grids are indicative of the renowned artist's style which impacted upon Abstract expressionism, Minimalism, and Transcendentalism. Yank's steel wall-based sculptures reference nature and convey abstract emotional content in minimalist/maximalist forms.
"Wild Pigment Project" curated by Wild Pigment Project's founding director Tilke Elkins will be on display in the Mullennix Bridge Gallery. This group exhibition, which originated at form & concept gallery in Santa Fe, NM, brings together painters and dyers, ink-makers and ceramicists, researchers, scientists and traditional cultural practitioners to explore pigments found in plants, minerals and the industrial waste stream. The project promotes ecological balance and regenerative economies through a passion for wild pigments, their places of origin, and their cultural histories.
"Cara Despain: Specter" forms a larger conversation happening across the Southwest, running concurrently with shows at the Las Cruces Branigan Cultural Center and The El Paso Museum of Art, both which tackle the environmental, biological, mental and physical effects of nuclear development across our rural communities of the U.S. All three exhibitions will include programming events throughout the summer.
Admission to all programming events is free and open to the public. For more information as well as a detailed calendar with associated programs and dates please visit uam.nmsu.edu call 575-646-2545 or email artmuseum@nmsu.edu.