Exhibitions :: Coming Off the Wall

Coming Off the Wall, (November 19, 1998 - February 26, 1999), features works which jut off the wall and into the physical space of the viewer. Among its many departures from tradition, many great works of twentieth-century art have defied the idea that paintings should express an "illusion of reality" on a flat surface. In the academic tradition, Western painters utilized perspective and coloration to create scenes which mimic reality, creating an alternative world. Modern artisits have stripped away such conventions by eliminating perspective, using pure color and abstracting their subject matter. Artists such as Donald Judd have questioned art's relationship to the surface of the wall, in works which appear to defy gravity.

The fifteen artists featured in this exhibit utilize an array of media in works which vary in scale from intimate to larger-than-life. While many of the works hang on the wall like a bas relief, others contain three-dimensional pieces which careen from the flat, painted surfaces onto the floor. The exhibit asks viewers to re-think their physical relationship to a work of art, while exposing them to some of the contemporary art world's most extraordinary talents.