WILSON, N.C. — Barton Art Galleries will host the work of acclaimed artist Juan Logan in an exhibition titled “Works.” The opening reception for the exhibition is scheduled for Sunday, March 18, from 4 – 6 p.m. This event is open to the public free of charge, and the community is invited to attend. Logan’s “Works” will be on display from March 18 until April 12.
Immediately following the opening reception, Logan will be the featured speaker for a Barton College Friends of Visual Arts Dinner and Lecture on Sunday evening, March 18. The dinner and lecture is by invitation only for members of the College’s Friends of Visual Arts. For membership details, please contact Frances Belcher at 252-399-6357 or email fbelcher@barton.edu.
Logan’s artworks address subjects relevant to the American experience as a whole. At once abstract and representational, his painting, drawings, sculptures, installations, prints, and videos address the interconnections of race, place, and power. They make visible how hierarchical relations and social stereotypes shape individuals, institutions, and the material and mental landscapes of contemporary life. For instance, the silhouette of a head, which appears in many of his works, confronts the viewer to implicate him/her in the politics of social space, even in galleries and museums.
In an excerpt from his “Pleasure and Power” critique of Logan’s exhibition, Andrew W. Kahrl, assistant professor of history at Marquette University, explains, “Therein lies the powerful message behind Logan’s visual forms: that race is made through the spaces we occupy and the opportunities and disadvantage they entail. The segregation of waterways under Jim Crow was not some irrational product of now-vanquished racial fears, but instead was an integral part of a system of economical exploitation that embedded symbols of racial power into land itself. That these symbols remain with us today, informing where we play and with whom, testifies to Faulkner’s oft-quoted line, ‘The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.’”
Logan has participated in over three hundred solo and group exhibitions. His works can be found in private, corporate, and public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Gibbes Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Zimmerli Museum of Art, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum.
Logan’s honors include awards and fellowships from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, and the Phillip Morris Companies.
Born in Nashville, Tenn., Logan grew up in North Carolina, and currently makes his home in Chapel Hill. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
For additional information about this exhibition, please contact Susan Fecho, chair of the Department of Art and Design, at 252-399-6480 or email: sfecho@barton.edu.
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Questions? Please contact Kathy Daughety, director of public relations, at 252-399-6529 or email: kdaughety@barton.edu.