This year’s first senior art exhibition consists of three Southwestern University seniors. The exhibit includes paintings and sculptures by Carly Dennis, Charles Morris, and Amber Wallour.

This joint exhibition will consist of: 

“Accumulations” by Carly Dennis
“Beyond Minimalism” by Charles Morris
“Box Worlds” by Amber Wallour

 

“Accumulations,” Carly Dennis’s series of vibrant, densely composed oil paintings, deals with consumer culture and its impacts on people, creatures, and land across the globe. Dennis explains, “To explore this issue, I create sensuous yet chaotic images that elicit conflicting sensations of delight and discomfort. Referencing the appeal of new commodities and the repulsiveness of toxic byproducts, my series of paintings reflects on the lived effects of our current inegalitarian structures of wealth, health, and power.”

 

Charles Morris’s sculpture exhibition, “Beyond Minimalism,” combines the minimalist theory of reduction of form with the expanding powers of organic expression through repeating solid geometry. In this series of large-scale sculptural works, Morris uses the repetition of strong symmetrical geometric units organized along a complex spline. According to Morris, “The idea that a form is a thing unto itself is intriguing to me and expands the human perception of such forms beyond just surface and material.”

 

Amber Wallour’s painting exhibition “Box Worlds” reveals the creative aspects of subjective experience. In her two-step creative process, Wallour first constructs dioramas of mismatched objects, taking items out of their original contexts to transform their meaning. She then employs them as subject matter for realist paintings, slightly altering the color, light, and perspective to create images of a nonsensical micro-environment. Wallour says, “When I paint, I find that meaning is arbitrary, giving us license to invent and arrive at our own personal realities. This phenomenon can also be seen in the collective and continual production of culture and language, as well as in individual attempts to understand the human experience.”

Free and open to the public.