‘Oddments: Recent Images’ Exhibit, Reception at TAMIU, March 2

Don’t miss “Oddments: Recent Images” by artist/photographer Kent Rush on exhibit at the Texas A&M International University Center for the Fine and Performing Arts Gallery March 2 – April 13. There will be a reception Thursday, March 2 from 5:30 – 8 p.m. and a talk with the artist at 6:30 p.m.

This event is free and open to the public.

Rush is professor of art and chair of the department of art and art history at the University of Texas, San Antonio. He has had more than 20 solo and 100 group and competitive exhibitions of his work regionally, nationally and internationally and has received numerous awards and recognitions. Rush was a Fulbright Senior Fellow (lecture/research) teaching printmaking courses at the Taller de Las Artes Graficas "Rufino Tamayo" in Oaxaca, Mexico fall semester 1988. He also won a Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA Individual Artist Fellowship in 1991.

Rush's current works are black and white silver-gelatin photographs of odd concrete forms. He also prints smaller versions of these same images in the arcane, 19th century photomechanical process of collotype.

“These depicted unnamed, anonymous objects, surfaces and incidents are hunted and collected. They are found often removed, obscure or sometimes obvious,” says Rush in his artist statement about the subjects in his photographs.

“Many of the found objects are of concrete, a significant common denominator of world culture. It is ubiquitous, common, resistant, defiant awkward, brute, dumb, massive, inarticulate. Having been once contained, it now contains, limits, supports, and/or covers and, in some cases, is released from its burden and abandoned. The consequent forms gain dignity through time and perseverance,” he adds.

He says the results are a collaboration between the artifact, the camera, the artist and ultimately, the viewer.

“The low-tech, plastic camera captures the subject and transforms it. It muffles detail, reveals form, value and texture and isolates the object as a collected specimen,” explains Rush’s statement.

For more information, please contact Alma Haertlein, TAMIU assistant professor, at 326.3041, e-mail almah@tamiu.edu or visit offices in CFPA 208A.

Gallery hours of operation are from noon to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday.

Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests and interviews should contact the Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services at prmis@tamiu.edu