Wednesday, October 11, 2017

UIS Visual Arts Gallery presents “of strange shadows” from Texas-based print collaborators Leslie Mutchler and Jason Urban

The University of Illinois Springfield Visual Arts Gallery is pleased to present “of strange shadows” from Texas-based collaborators Leslie Mutchler and Jason Urban. The exhibit will open on Thursday, October 26, and run through Thursday, November 16. An artist reception will take place on Thursday, October 26, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

The exhibit, “of strange shadows,” is an investigation of color, print and collective memory. Contrasting a subdued primary palette with gray images of residual protest and violence, artist-collaborators Mutchler and Urban look back to the 1960’s and 1970's as captured in printed matter from the same era. The installation of layered digital prints evoke the smoking and obscured remnants of a civil strife and political tumult at once too familiar and yet distant. The layering of large-scale, abstracted images printed on everyday bond paper suggests the ephemerality and fragility of any one generation’s defining moments.

As artists and collaborators, Mutchler and Urban are interested in the handmade (handprinted) and the duality of actual and virtual, experience and meta-experience. Both have multiple degrees in printmaking and have been working for several years to make relevant the archaic and dying craft of print.

Mutchler’s recent projects are experiential and examine the functionality of the printed form through multi-participatory installations. Urban is co-founder and co-editor of Printeresting.org, a 2011 Creative Capital Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant winning blog, focused on interesting and relevant contemporary printmaking, print, and print-related issues. Both teach in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin where Mutchler is associate chair and director of the AAH Core Program and Urban is head of the studio division's print area.

The Visual Arts Gallery is centrally located on the UIS campus in the Health and Science Building, Room 201, and is open Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Access Gallery is located in the Visual and Performing Arts Building and is open Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

For more information, visit the UIS Visual Arts Gallery website at www.uis.edu/visualarts/gallery or contact the gallery at 217/206-6506 or alach@uis.edu.

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