Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
On view through July 23
Various times
Celebrating the opening of its latest round of solo and collaborative exhibitions, the Shadyside-based arts center is hosting an opening reception this Friday from 5:30 to 9 p.m.
With nine new art openings all under one roof—and free admission (or a $10 suggested donation to support the PCA’s exhibitions)—the event is a great chance to explore the region’s vibrant and varied contemporary art scene.
On view through July 23 in the PCA’s Marshall Galleries, the new solo and group exhibitions represent a wide range of creative practices spanning painting, sculpture, installation, ceramics, new media, drawing, and more.
Curated by Laura Domencic, the exhibits explore thought-provoking themes and concepts such as memory, fear, literal and figurative landscapes, collaboration, personal identity, violence, and more.
Featured artists are: Nikki Brugnoli, Isabel Farnsworth & Shannon Hines, Jiyong Hong, Magic Organs: DS Kinsel & Julie Mallis, Misty Morrison, Nicole Renee Ryan, Jonathan Schwarz & Angela Biederman, Devan Shimoyama & Danny Ferrell and Lauren Wilcox.
All based locally or regionally, the 13 artists were selected during the PCA’s annual open call for submissions.
Step into the site-specific installation, MO Studios, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the studio practice of Magic Organs, a collaborative founded by artists Julie Mallis and D.S. Kinsel. Transforming the PCA’s gallery space into an immersive environment, the living installation embodies the duo’s unique cooperative process based out of BOOM Concepts in Garfield. Viewers will have the chance to meet the artists and experience brand new works firsthand, including video projections, performance pieces, in-progress projects, and more.
In Jiyong Hong’s display of installation pieces, paintings and sculptures titled, Grid, Pall-Mall & Stepping-Stones, attendees will view evocative “memory maps” the artist created based on walks throughout her new hometown. Offering a shared sense of the city’s identity, Hong’s abstracted expressions also examine a sense of place in Pittsburgh.
With Nikki Brugnoli’s Horizon Lost series, gallery-goers will discover emotionally-charged drawings and prints inspired by the artist’s recent visits to the area’s old coke ovens and slate dumps. Dense, blurry and saturated with both light and dark textures, the 2-D works also offer a meditation on Brugnoli’s youth going up in semi-rural, post-industrial Western Pennsylvania.
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