Department of Art Events

Visiting Artist Lectures
Undergraduate Exhibitions
MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Curator and Critic Tour


Mar 19
Ablaze (With Destruction and Abundance)

Presented by the Center for Art Research Adam DeSorbo: Ablaze (With Destruction and Abundance) March 1- May 19, 2024 CFAR billboard project at 510 Oak Street,...
Ablaze (With Destruction and Abundance)
March 1–May 19
510 Oak

Presented by the Center for Art Research

Adam DeSorbo: Ablaze (With Destruction and Abundance)

March 1- May 19, 2024 CFAR billboard project at 510 Oak Street, Eugene, OR 97403

Ablaze (With Destruction and Abundance) depicts ochre-tinted maple leaves nailed to wood planks that have been strengthened through a traditional Japanese charring process known as the Yakisugi method. The burned boards and maple leaves allude to transitional states, both benign and seasonal, and the more destructive forces of increasing wildfire activity. The embedded relationship between preservation and destruction as it relates to the Anthropocene brings our paradoxical tendencies as a species into full relief. The image is activated through original text by the artist, making explicit the process of grieving a burning world. The interaction between the image and the text proposes an embrace of our ecological cracking, the necessity to witness, the urge to preserve, and the radical act of finding joy while existing in the cracks.

This CFAR billboard project is supported by the University of Oregon Department of ARt’s Center for Art Research in conjunction with the exhibition series Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World.

Apr 3
Alison Saar: Uproot 6:00 p.m.

RSVP: https://jsma.uoregon.edu/artist-talk-alison-saar Alison Saar is a Los Angeles based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the...
Alison Saar: Uproot
April 3
6:00 p.m.
Prince Lucien Campbell Hall (PLC) 180, reception to follow at the JSMA

RSVP: https://jsma.uoregon.edu/artist-talk-alison-saar

Alison Saar is a Los Angeles based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and Black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. She will discuss her recent works, three of which are on view at the JSMA in Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and My Body, My Choice? Art and Reproductive Justice. Grow’d (2019), a life-sized, bronze statue depicting the literary character Topsy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, monumentalizes the intersecting histories of cotton, slavery, and identity in the United States. Uproot and Plucked (2023), a pair of double-sided paintings on vintage cotton-picking bags, respond to the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alison Saar’s visit is sponsored by Jordan D. Schnitzer.

Apr 4
B. Wurtz: "Art Works", Davis Family Lecture 4:00 p.m.

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research B. Wurtz’s repurposing of everyday...
B. Wurtz: "Art Works", Davis Family Lecture
April 4
4:00 p.m.
Lawrence Hall 177

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research

B. Wurtz’s repurposing of everyday flotsam into joyous, humorous, and beautiful objects undermine grand artistic gesture while elevating the commonplace. The artist’s transformative amalgams of found materials have tended to coalesce around the subjects of “sleeping, eating, and keeping warm”—the foundational human needs named in his 1973 drawing Three Important Things. While his sculptures are often modest in scale, in 2018, the artist created his now iconic Kitchen Trees for the New York City Public Art Fund, transforming City Hall Park with towering columns of colorful colanders exploding with plastic fruit. 

B. Wurtz has been the subject of over 52 solo exhibitions at prestigious venues including: Feature Inc. (1987, 1991, 1992, 2001, 2003, 2006, New York); Gallery 400 (2000, Chicago); White Flag Projects (2012, St. Louis); Kunstverein (2015, Freiburg, Germany); and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, (2015, Ridgefield, Connecticut). In 2015, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom mounted a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work that traveled to La Casa Encendida, Madrid through 2016. In 2018, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles mounted a major solo exhibition of his work, This Has No Name. His work has also been included in over 174 group exhibitions including: Pandora’s Box: Joseph Cornell Unlocks the MCA Collection (2011, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago); Building Blocks: Contemporary Works from the Collection (2011, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence); and Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s (2018, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.) 

This lecture is made possible by the Davis Family Endowed Fund in Art. 

Lectures are also live streamed and the videos are archived on YouTube

Apr 5
Sacrifice Zones – Jon Bellona and Ralph Pugay noon

Presented by the Center for Art Research Sacrifice Zones – Jon Bellona and Ralph Pugay Exhibition: April 5-21, 2024  510 Oak St, Eugene, OR...
Sacrifice Zones – Jon Bellona and Ralph Pugay
April 5–21
noon
510 Oak

Presented by the Center for Art Research

Sacrifice Zones – Jon Bellona and Ralph Pugay

Exhibition: April 5-21, 2024  510 Oak St, Eugene, OR 97403

Reception: Friday, April 5, from 5:30-7:30  p.m. Gallery hours: Friday-Sunday from noon-4:00 p.m.

This exhibition features artists playing with signifiers of theatricality, hysteria, and humor in contemporary conversation regarding the notion of “apocalypse”. What are the varying scales of apocalypse? And most importantly, what might come after?

Sacrifice Zones is part of the exhibition series Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World, organized by curators-in-residence Ashley Stull Meyers and Aurora Tang and made possible by the University of Oregon Department of Art’s Center for Art Research and the Ford Family Foundation.

Apr 11
Kahlil Robert Irving: "Artist Talk" 4:00 p.m.

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research  Kahlil Robert Irving will present a...
Kahlil Robert Irving: "Artist Talk"
April 11
4:00 p.m.
Lawrence Hall 177

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research 

Kahlil Robert Irving will present a lecture recounting experiences and details around his broad practice. A major focus will be several of his recent institutional exhibitions including Projects: Kahlil Robert Irving at the Museum of Modern Art, Archeology of the Present at the Walker Art Center + Kemper Art Museum in Saint Louis, and AnticKS + MOdels: My Theater for your Eyes at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.  

Kahlil Robert Irving (b. 1992, San Diego, CA) is an artist currently living and working in the USA. He attended the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art, Washington University in St. Louis (MFA Fellow, 2017); and the Kansas City Art Institute (BFA, Art History and Ceramics/Sculpture, 2015).  His work has been exhibited at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; the Arizona State University Art Museum, Phoenix; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Rhode Island, among others.      Soon, Irving will present Kahlil Robert Irving: Archeology of the Present at the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. Concurrently, he will present a major 6000 square foot solo exhibition at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Both will be on view until July 2024. Recently, Irving presented a commission as part of “I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen” at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth curated by Alison Hearst. Recently, Irving presented Projects: Kahlil Robert Irving at the Museum of Modern Art (NY) a part of the Studio Museum in Harlem partnership from December 2021 to May 2022. Irving has been awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2019) and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2020). In 2018, Irving’s first large scale exhibition took place at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, Connecticut, and was accompanied by a full-color catalogue with essays and an interview. Currently, he is presenting a semi-permanent large-scale commission in the lobby at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio.  

His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; the RISD Museum, Rhode Island; the Tang Teaching Museum & Art Gallery, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 

Lectures are also live streamed and the videos are archived on YouTube

Apr 18
Tallmadge Doyle: "As Above" 4:00 p.m.

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research  Tallmadge Doyle is an artist whose current...
Tallmadge Doyle: "As Above"
April 18
4:00 p.m.
Lawrence Hall 177

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research 

Tallmadge Doyle is an artist whose current Printmaking and Painting practice integrates intricate ecosystems of microscopic Ocean life forms with the expansive telescopic view of our solar system. These natural realms, dissimilar in scope yet, at times indistinguishable in form, overlap and intertwine.  The resulting images serve as playgrounds for new visual realities where color is ethereal, vivid and brilliant, where light is unpredictable and form vibrates, allowing access into the abundance and immensity of what is often unseen.     Doyle grew up New York and attended The Cleveland Art Institute for undergraduate studies. In 1990 she came to Oregon to attend the MFA program at the University of Oregon focusing on Printmaking and Painting.  Doyle’s work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. She is represented by the Seattle Art Museum Gallery and Davidson Gallery in Seattle, Augen Gallery in Portland and the Karin Clarke Gallery in Eugene.  She is a member of the Los Angles Printmaking Society, the Boston Printmakers and Seattle Print Arts as well as the Southern Graphics Council International.    This lecture is made possible by the Laverne Krause Lectures and Exhibitions endowment. 

*Lecture will be followed by a reception in the Laverne Krause Gallery.

Lectures are also live streamed and the videos are archived on YouTube

May 2
Angela Hennessy, George and Matilda Fowler Lecture 4:00 p.m.

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research  Angela Hennessy is an Oakland based artist...
Angela Hennessy, George and Matilda Fowler Lecture
May 2
4:00 p.m.
Lawrence Hall 177

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research 

Angela Hennessy is an Oakland based artist and survivor of gun violence. Through writing, studio work, and ritual performance, her practice questions assumptions about Death and the Dead themselves. Hennessy constructs sculptures and installations with everyday domestic labor—washing, wrapping, stitching, knotting, brushing, and braiding.  

For many years she served as a hospice volunteer and death doula working with families on home funerals, death vigils, and grief rituals. She has received awards from San Francisco Artadia, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Fleishhacker Foundation. Hennessy is on the advisory board of Recompose in Seattle and lectures nationally on aesthetic and social practices that mediate the boundary between the living and the dead. 

Her work has been included in exhibitions at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Museum of the African Diaspora, Oakland Museum of California, and Pt. 2 Gallery and is in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Crocker Art Museum. Her audio guides, meditations, and poems have been featured at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, de Young Museum, and SOMArts Gallery. 

This lecture is made possible by the George and Matilda Fowler Endowment Fund.  

Lectures are also live streamed and the videos are archived on YouTube.  

May 3
Progress – Marcus Fischer and Lisa Ward noon

Presented by the Center for Art Research Progress – Marcus Fischer and Lisa Ward Exhibition: May 3– 19, 2024  510 Oak St, Eugene, OR...
Progress – Marcus Fischer and Lisa Ward
May 3–19
noon
510 Oak

Presented by the Center for Art Research

Progress – Marcus Fischer and Lisa Ward

Exhibition: May 3– 19, 2024  510 Oak St, Eugene, OR 97403

Reception:  Friday, May 3 from 5:30-7:30  p.m. Gallery hours: Friday- Sunday from 12:00- 4:00 p.m.

This exhibition examines the varied definitions of “progress” in the ongoing effort to witness, tend to, and historicize human intervention in places often considered unleveraged.

Progess is part of the exhibition series Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World, organized by curators-in-residence Ashley Stull Meyers and Aurora Tang and made possible by the University of Oregon Department of Art’s Center for Art Research and the Ford Family Foundation.

May 9
Dionne Lee: "Artist Talk" 4:00 p.m.

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research  Dionne Lee is a visual artist working in...
Dionne Lee: "Artist Talk"
May 9
4:00 p.m.
Lawrence Hall 177

University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series   Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research 

Dionne Lee is a visual artist working in photography, collage, and video. Her work explores power and personal history in relation to the American landscape, and interrogates historical narratives that exist within photographic representations of land and place. 

Lee received her MFA from California College of the Arts. She has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Feria Material, Mexico City; Barbican Art Gallery, London; New Orleans Museum of Art; Aperture Foundation, New York; Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and the San Francisco Arts Commission, among others. Lee was a 2022 Artist-in-Residence at the Chinati Foundation and a 2021–2023 Artist-in-Residence with Unseen California. 

Lectures are also live streamed and the videos are archived on YouTube

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