Fall Guide: Art: TSU’s Space for New Media ventures onto the frontiers of digital media
by David C. Maddox
November, Tennessee State UniversityOver the summer, the TSU Art Department has been building a state-of-the-art space for the presentation and study of new media—video, sound, computer-based and everything digital. When the space opens in November, it will have production teaching, and exhibition space, equipped with large-format display panels and advanced production gear.
This facility will give TSU faculty and students the chance to explore the newest frontiers of digital media, and will allow the university to attract major visiting artists—something the TSU Gallery has already been doing. On Oct. 1, it opens a show by Carl Pope (included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial) and Aisha Cousins. Both are involved with community-based pieces tailored to TSU. Pope will deliver an artist's talk in TSU's Hiram Van Gordon Gallery the same day. • Oct. 1: Farrar Hood, Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt Hood is a painter who captures figures in states of uneasy repose that have the quiet tension of well-crafted, character-based literature. In her paintings, a woman might doze in a chair that subtly hangs precariously above the ground, or sleep fully clothed in a tub of water surrounded by miniature sharks. Opening and talk 5-7 p.m.
• Oct. 2: Oliver Herring, Frist Center Brooklyn-based artist Herring, who has been profiled on the PBS series Art:21, has made a mark with unconventional hybrids of media. In the work he will bring to Nashville, he takes photos of subjects and affixes them to sculptures of the person, creating a three-dimensional photo. Because he constructs the photo overlay from multiple sections with different skin tonality, the final figures look less like replicas from life than artificially generated projections.
• Oct. 16: The Real Thing, Gallery F This group show will bring former Nashvillian Libby Rowe back to town from San Antonio, introduce new Watkins faculty member James Darr, and highlight Sara Estes, one of the students from the increasingly energetic TSU undergraduate program (which also includes Patricia Earnhardt, Daniel Lai and Matt Christy). The artists in this show work across diverse media, and you can expect related talks and events at the gallery. Opening 6-9 p.m.
• Oct. 17: Barry Buxkamper, Cumberland Gallery Buxkamper's work is funny, filled with detail and references and popping with color. His 2006 Cumberland show featured a delightful series that bounced around with riffs on Darwin, primates, modern office environments and lawn equipment.
• Oct. 17: Catherine Forster, Rymer Gallery Last year Chicago-based Forster came to Rymer with an installation that transformed natural images and sounds into highly mediated elements that were reassembled to create a new environment in the gallery, organic but intensely crafted. It may be as close as you come this fall to an indoor walk in the woods.
