Two artists will be showing their work in an exhibit titled "Future Perfect Tense" on campus beginning Monday.
"Future Perfect Tense" will run from Jan. 14 through Feb. 22 in Biggin Gallery. On opening day at 5 p.m. Orion Wertz, associate professor of fine art in painting at Columbus State University, will present a lecture in Room 005 that will be followed by a public reception, and to coincide with the almost-utopian mood, admission will be free and open to the public.
"All of my pieces in the exhibition are paintings, for what that's worth," said Scott Anderson, assistant professor of painting & drawing at the University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts.
"The subject matter of the paintings usually is related some way to mythology, kind of science-fiction utopian imagery
of some kind, landscapes or figures," Anderson said. "And the paintings themselves are sort of somewhere in between representational and abstraction."
The similarities in their work can be found more in their themes rather than their methods.
"We're similar in the sense that we both create imagined worlds, and work within those idioms," Wertz said. "I refer to some very specific types of picture making that are probably more traditional. Scott's works, the allusions to abstraction and popular culture are a little stronger. And he also works with a larger scale of mark making. I tend to use a very small scale of mark making and that shifts our painting vocabulary in very different ways."
Anderson said that the connection between their work hinges on mutual fixations on ideas of the future, and in their mostly-optimistic considerations of what that future actually means.
The idea behind this exhibit has been in planning for years, Anderson said.
Optimism is a point that both artists agree is a factor in the paintings of this exhibition. However that optimism is expressed, on the other hand, is left for the viewer to determine.
Wertz and Anderson say their paintings lean more towards utopian because of imagery of the future.
"I would think utopian is probably a better term," Anderson said. "Not that what you see sometimes doesn't have a
kind of a dystopian flavor to it. But I think that even in dystopian science fiction there is an element of escape and there's almost positivity to it. "
On Feb. 22 Wertz will lead a "Narrative Corpse" workshop, in Biggin Gallery from 1-3 p.m.
The paintings will be on display in Biggin Gallery, Monday -Friday from 8 a.m.-4 p.m.
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