West Gallery

January - December 30, 2025

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Curators Statement:

“Even in stillness, there is movement.” – Anonymous

 

Visitors can embark on an artistic odyssey with "Harmonizing Dimensions," a curated collection delving into the intricate interplay of motion, time, and rhythm. This transformative exploration shapes and defines the creative landscape, leaving an enduring imprint on the ever-evolving art world.

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As we navigate the swift tapestry of the 21st century, our understanding of motion, time, and rhythm in art undergoes a profound transformation. Technological advancements and global connectivity dissolve traditional boundaries, providing artists with new realms to explore.

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Step into this odyssey at the Blanden, where artworks come alive dynamically, transcending conventional expressions. Let the masterpieces converge in your mind, facilitating a harmonious dialogue between motion, time, and rhythm. Across diverse mediums, artists showcase how movement breathes life into their works, time influences narratives, and rhythm orchestrates unique artistic experiences.

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Working in varied mediums, these artists share a profound grasp of the interplay among fundamental forces. Witness how motion is captured in brushstrokes, time in sculpture, and rhythm in the arrangement of forms and colors. The exhibition encourages an exploration of the dynamic relationship between the static and kinetic, tangible, and ephemeral, finite, and infinite – offering profound insights into the role of motion, time, and rhythm in shaping artistic expression.

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"Harmonizing Dimensions" invites you on a transformative journey where motion, time, and rhythm converge, unlocking uncharted realms of artistic expression. Celebrate the visionary contributions of artists worldwide as they entice us to delve into the profound mysteries within these elemental dimensions.

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May this exhibition inspire you to embrace the ever-shifting dynamics of life, fostering a deeper appreciation for the interconnected dance of motion, time, and rhythm in the realm of art.

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East Gallery

Aug 23 - Oct 18, 2025

 

Curated by Angela Ayala

CURATORS STATAMENT:

In Absentia explores the lasting impact of decisions made without our awareness or consent, highlighting the absence of color, voice, rights, and safety. By drawing from the Blanden Art Museum's permanent collection, this exhibition assemblies works that speak to themes of erasure, suppression, and resilience. Through the absence of physical presence, personal agency, or historical recognition, these pieces reveal the forces that shape our world not just through what is seen but through what has been omitted or obscured. Each work that makes up this exhibit approaches this idea differently, yet together, the works form a powerful dialogue about loss, struggle, and perseverance.

 

Some of the prominent examples from the show are Käthe Kollwitz's Woman and Death Hugging a Child, 1911; as part of In Absentia, this piece underscores the helplessness imposed by external forces whether war, poverty, or fate itself echoing the exhibition's theme of decisions made beyond our control.  Another notable selection is Robert Motherwell's Cadiz, 1952, which shifts this concept into abstraction, using bold, gestural forms to explore themes of suppression and resistance. In Cadiz, stark contrasts and bold gestures evoke a fragmented city, possibly shattered by the weight of war. In the context of In Absentia, his work mediates the unseen scars of history remnants of decisions made by those in power, with consequences that ripple through time. His abstraction denies the viewer a straightforward narrative, mirroring how historical events often leave behind fractured, incomplete accounts of the truth. Lastly is Henry Moore's Warrior with Shield, a striking bronze maquette that embodies the resilience that frequently emerges from absence. Warrior with Shield, the wounded yet defiant figure, missing a limb but still standing strong with a shield raised, speaks to survival despite vulnerability. The piece's rough, almost ancient texture suggests endurance through time, reflecting how individuals and cultures persist even when subjected to violence or erasure. In the exhibit, In Absentia, Moore's warrior symbolizes those who have been cast aside, forgotten, or wounded yet continue to resist. The work invites viewers to consider what remains after loss and how strength can be forged without security or certainty.

 

Together, these works, and the rest pulled from the Blanden Art Museum's permanent collection bring In Absentia to life, illustrating how absence can be both a void and a force. Each artist engaged deeply with themes of war, poverty, and loss, shaped by the events of their time.  All the works in this exhibit remind those excluded, silenced, or erased. In coalition, In Absentia asks us to consider what has been lost and what remains and how absence itself can shape the world we inhabit.

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In Memory of Kay Baldus

Second Floor Gallery

Sept 13 - Nov 8, 2025

 

Exhibit Statement:

Robert Craig and Phillip Chen construct worlds in which human presence is conspicuously absent yet deeply felt. Their landscapes do not depict people, but they reveal the consequences of human agency—offering scenes that hover between nature and culture, permanence and erosion, motion and stillness. We don’t simply observe these scenes; we intrude upon them, entering like accidental actors onto a film set.

 

Craig’s sculptures capture the sensation of glimpsing a landscape from a speeding vehicle. At first glance, each element appears familiar—a rock, bones, a bird, fencing: an entanglement of random debris. Yet on closer inspection, these forms resist resolution, opening space for emerging meanings. Their ambiguity conjures ideas that cannot be directly named but are nonetheless sensed; an assemblage of parts whose seemingly precarious balance conveys an instant and simultaneously its extension through time.

 

Chen’s paintings and woodcuts resemble actual, tangible environments, yet their photographic clarity suggests a different temporality—an evidentiary trace, the aura of something “having been there.” We are placed out of phase, in a time that feels adjacent but inaccessible. His works ask: “What deserves our stewardship? What is worth remembering?”

 

The works in this exhibition have the quality of a memory—half-remembered, half forgotten. Time resists chronological measurement, offering an interval that is both fleeting and enduring. The visible elements in their artworks evoke what is absent. Human presence is seen only through its traces: the imprint of altered terrain, abandoned fragments, and built environments. Craig and Chen’s art asks us to consider our bond with our world—a relationship marked by entanglement, consequence, and possibility.

 

Lenore Metrick-Chen

Professor Emeritus, Art and Cultural History