University of Arkansas Presents the Treachery of Objects at Fine Arts Center Gallery

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Image Credits: Brian Bress, Creative Ideas for Every Season, 2010. HD Video, 19:57 minutes. Courtesy of Cherry and Martin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

The University of Arkansas Department of Art is pleased to announce the exhibition The Treachery of Objects. The exhibition will be on display from Jan. 29 to Feb. 28 in the Fine Arts Center Gallery. The Department of Art will host a reception on Friday, Jan. 29, at the Fine Arts Center Gallery at 5 p.m. A lecture by The Treachery of Objects curator, Margaret Meehan, will be held at Giffels Auditorium, Old Main at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 28. All gallery programming is free and open to the public.

A rose by any other name is still a rose … unless it's a pipe. While Shakespeare implied that the name of a thing does not affect what it really is, René Magritte knew that context is important to identify the meaning of an object. With his 1929 painting The Treachery of Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), he pointed out that, in fact, you can't smoke a painting. It is just a representation. And while you can never smoke it, you can get the joke. The Treachery of Objects brings together eight artists working in a variety of mediums tied tenuously together by the material of clay. In each work in the exhibition, clay, with its mythic alchemical powers, holds the potential for both energy and action.

Artists include Brian Bress, William Cobbing, Jennifer Ling-Datchuk, Julia Haft-Candell, Brian R. Jones, Kristen Morgin, Michael Jones McKean, and Thomas Müller.