Hampden Gallery presents the work of Line Bruntse and Steven Buddington

Intimate Exposure

January 20 – February 10, 2005

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 03, 4-6 pm

Gallery Talk: Thursday, February 10 at 4:30 pm

Intimate Exposure – Is it a contradiction in terms, a double entendre, or an exhibition of recent works by the Department of Art Foundations Program two new faculty members? If you think it is all of the above. You are right!

Intimate exposure will feature new work in sculpture by Line Bruntse, a native of Denmark who has spent the majority of her adult life in the States, when not traveling throughout Europe creating and exhibiting work. Bruntse’s peripatetic existence may be part of the inspiration for her current explorations. Using her unique frame of reference and personal connections to material history – Bruntse is inspired to create, through her installations, a universal reference for the viewer to connect with using their own personal memories.

Bruntse tends to work in three formats: 1)large scale installations, 2)miniatures/intimate objects which relate to large works, 3)drawings, using the techniques from her sculpture. In her artist statement Bruntse states that working on large scale installations allows her to surround the viewer and alter their perception of time and space.

She states further, ” I provide a context of memory triggers in the form of either materials, technique used, or architectural references… I use found objects as a material equal to any other material, not as focal point. Repetition makes it about the role the object plays in the piece instead of about the object itself….The sense of touch, whether imagined or real, is a potent memory trigger along with smells we remember. I combine these memory triggers with architectural references in my installations to make the intent of the piece ‘Universally Personal”.”

Bruntse’s travels and the network she has built with other artists abroad has been instrumental in bringing Austrian artist, Heimo Wallner, to the Hampden Gallery for a simultaneous exhibition to be held in the Hampden Gallery Lobby entitled SAU AUS USA. Bruntse has been awarded grant funding to support the exhibition from the UMASS Alumni Association, the UMASS Arts Council and Stone Soup Concrete of Northampton, MA.

(Please see related story on Heimo Wallner in Spotlight)

Intimate exposures will also feature the paintings of Steve Buddington, a recent graduate of the Yale MFA program. Buddington is often asked why he paints books. The question itself, says Buddington, cuts to both the interest and the difficulty of his project. In his mind, he does not paint books, he paints dictionaries, or more specifically, he paints a few dictionaries – the ones he lives and works with; in his own words “ Not the dictionary, but this dictionary. Not the thing’s idea, but the thing itself.”

In his artist statement, Buddington elaborates:

“Articles are some of the smallest words in the English language and yet the influence they exert on the meaning of a sentence is vast. Without articles we are condemned to a world of the nonspecific and the general, or perhaps worse, the cliché. Through painting I seek relationship with the specific objects that make up my world. A doorknob is all but overlooked until the day it stops working. For me the process of building a painting is as important as the thing I paint. I don’t generally plan my paintings, but allow them a degree of self-determination, which translates for me as a mysterious encounter with a will not wholly my own…

My paintings are exercises or experiments in the activity of looking again; how can I see this object differently, what did I miss by assuming I had exhausted the meaning of what was before me, believing I had figured it out. At what point can I begin to see the thing itself, rather that the word that gives it life in language? If painting is a visual language, how can the visual reality of the thing I paint, in my case, often my dictionary, trump its work. In important ways, this is why I stick with the dictionary, an object whose function is to preserve the importance of words in their specificity, with its own word emblazoned across its chest: The American Heritage Dictionary.

Life is nothing if not mysterious. Through the daily activity of returning always to the same object, I hope to engage with that mystery in my work and in the process make it more available for those viewers who see my paintings, and are compelled, as I am, to look again.”

Sponsors: SACEF, UMASS ARTS COUNCIL

Gallery Hours: Mon-Thu: noon – 6 pm and Sun 2-5 pm

Location: Southwest Residential Area of campus. Off University Drive.

For more information: 413-545-0680.