Marywood University to Hold Make, Believe: The Maslow Collection and the Moving Image Exhibition
Exhibition dates: January 26 – March 21, 2018
Opening reception: January 26, 2018, from 5-7 p.m.
Mahady Gallery/ Maslow Study Gallery for Contemporary Art at Marywood University
Curator Gallery talk: February 7, 2018, from 4-5 p.m.
Make, Believe: The Maslow Collection and the Moving Image
Make, Believe generates a dialogue between the work of artists in The Maslow Collection and artists working with the moving image. The films and videos of Basma Alsharif, Nazlı Dinçel, Julie Harrison & Neil Zusman, David Haxton and M.M. Serra all, in their respective ways, interrogate the notion of the acceptance of reality. What might otherwise be considered documentary scenarios become realities that slip, shift and falter, and we begin to inhabit spaces of the unreal or uncanny. These artworks demonstrate a fluid mobility between stable, recognizable ground and the far reaches of the mind and imagination. This freedom of movement also presents itself through a number of diverse practices within The Maslow Collection. Using photography, drawing, painting, printmaking and conceptual practices throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, artists like Alice Aycock, Mark Cohen, Barbara Kasten, Dorothea Rockburne and Sandy Skoglund examine similar themes surrounding unexpected spatial realities. They each ask, in their own way, “Will you believe what you see?”
Featuring moving image works by: Basma Alsharif, Nazlı Dinçel, Julie Harrison & Neil Zusman, David Haxton and M.M. Serra; with works from The Maslow Collection by: Alice Aycock, Jennifer Bartlett, Mark Cohen, Hamish Fulton, David Haxton, Barbara Kasten, Martin Mull, Ellen Phelan, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Rockburne, Sandy Skoglund, and Andy Warhol.
Make, Believe is curated by Herb Shellenberger, independent curator, and Ryan Ward, curator of The Maslow Collection at Marywood University
About Herb Shellenberger:
Herb Shellenberger is a curator and writer originally from Pennsylvania and based in London. He has curated screenings at institutions such as Irish Film Institute, Light Industry (Brooklyn), Lightbox Film Center (Philadelphia), LUX (London) and NYU. Since 2016, he has been Associate Programmer for Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK). Shellenberger has lectured on film and contemporary art at museums, universities and art spaces internationally, and has written for publications including Art-Agenda, Art Monthly and The Brooklyn Rail. He curated the series “Independent Frames: American Experimental Animation in the 1970s + 1980s,” which premiered at Tate Modern in 2017 and is touring internationally. He is co-programmer with Almudena Esobar López of “COMMON VISIONS,” a series examining collaborative practices in non-fiction film and media, presented by the Flaherty Seminar at Anthology Film Archives, New York in winter 2018.
About The Maslow Collection:
The Maslow Collection is the largest and most comprehensive collection of contemporary art in Northeastern Pennsylvania, with over 500 works by 150 artists. Collected by Marilyn and Richard Maslow and originally housed at Intermetro Industries, it is now on long-term loan to Marywood University. The largest part of the Collection is devoted to paintings by newly established or emerging artists working or exhibiting in New York, N.Y., during the late 1970s through the early 1990s, such as David Reed, Terry Winters, Nicholas Africano, Robert Cumming, James Biederman, Jack Goldstein, Melissa Meyer, Gary Lang, Anthony Sorce, Edward Henderson, and Katherine Porter, among many others.
The Maslow Collection also includes major prints by Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Robert Longo, Chuck Close, Sherrie Levine, Edward Ruscha, Jane Hammond, Peter Halley, Sol LeWitt, and Andy Warhol, among others; and important photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Barbara Kasten, Lee Friedlander, Sandy Skoglund, and Mark Cohen.
The Maslow Collection has lent works to major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in N.Y.C.; The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Calif.; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, N.Y.; and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pa.; among others.
For additional information about the Make, Believe: The Maslow Collection and the Moving Image exhibition, please email Ryan Ward, curator of The Maslow Collection at Marywood University, at rward@marywood.edu, or call (570) 348-6278.