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In March, NJCU Galleries are going to hold two exhibitions to represent New-Jersey-based artists of diverse artistic and cultural background.   

Boundless Light: Sunil Garg (March 17 –  April 17, 2020; Reception: March 18, 4:30 – 7:30 p.m.)

Visual Arts Gallery (100 Culver Avenue, Jersey City, NJ)

Using light, form, color, and movement, Sunil Garg [] creates site-specific installations to turn NJCU’s Visual Arts Gallery into a multi-sensory environment which visitors can freely explore. Through Garg’s artistry, ordinary materials such as paper, chicken wire, and PVC are morphed into ethereal matter, constantly changing impressions, and reflecting colored lights. Although technologies enable this environment, they are almost invisible and visitors can get lost within a limitless space.

Born and raised in a farming village in India, Garg grew up with only natural light. After moving to New Jersey, Garg had a long career in business and law before starting to make art out of manufactured light five years ago. His experimental light art drew much attention in a short time, and Garg received an artist-in-residence opportunity at Gallery Aferro in Newark and was commissioned to make site-specific public art installations in Key West, FL, Madison WI, and Long Beach Island, NJ among others. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Hyperallergic, Artefuse, and other media. He lives in Summit, NJ, and works in Summit, East Orange, Newark, and Jersey City, NJ.
 

Image: Sunil Garg, Hanging Garden, 2020, foam boards and programmed RGB lights

 

Common Language: Dahlia Elsayed (March 17 – April 17, 2020; Reception: 3/24, 4:30 – 7:30 p.m.)

The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery (Hepburn Hall, room 323, 2039 Kennedy Blvd., Jersey City, NJ)

Common Language presents a series of works on paper and a site-specific ceramic installation by artist Dahlia Elsayed []. Her allegorical landscapes use a symbolic vocabulary rooted in cartography, comics, and cosmology. Through Elsayed’s visual narrative, the exhibition explores the possibilities of transcultural visual communication, the potentials and limits of language, and the ways in which image and text modify each other for alternative meanings.

Elsayed was born in the United States to Egyptian and Armenian parents. Her family’s diasporic experience informs much of her work. She writes short fictions for created landscapes that take the form of narrative paintings, print and installation. Elsayed’s work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions throughout the United States and internationally, including the 12th Cairo Biennale, Robert Miller Gallery, and The New Jersey State Museum. Her work is in the public collections of the Newark Museum, the Zimmerli Museum, the US Department of State, amongst others. Dahlia has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, Visual Studies Workshop, the MacDowell Colony, Women’s Studio Workshop, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the NJ State Council on the Arts. She received her MFA from Columbia University, and lives and works in New Jersey. Ms. Elsayed is Professor of Humanities at CUNY LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, NY.

This exhibition is part of NJCU Women’s History Month Celebrations and co-sponsored by Speicher-Rubin Women's Center for Equity and Diversity.

Image: Dahlia Elsayed, Common Language, 2020, acrylic on paper

 

¿ìèÆƽâ°æ NJCU Galleries

NJCU Galleries are part of the NJCU Center for the Arts, whose programs are made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of the State, a partner agency for the National Endowment for the Arts.

The NJCU Visual Arts Gallery is located in the ground floor of the Visual Arts Building, at 100 Culver Avenue, and Lemmerman Gallery is in room 323 of Hepburn Hall, which faces the main gate of the university (2039 Kennedy Blvd. Jersey City, NJ 07305). They are open to the public on Monday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment.

For further information and group visits, contact Midori Yoshimoto, Gallery Director, at myoshimoto@njcu.edu or 201-200-2197.