Press Releases May 6, 2013
Summer Exhibitions Feature Sculpture, Drawing, and Video
at the University Art Museum
William Lamson: A Certain Slant of Light
Michelle Segre: Antecedents of the Astral Hamster
June 27 through September 14, 2013
Artists’ reception on Thursday, June 27, 2013, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Free and open to the public.
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ALBANY, NY--- The University Art Museum is pleased to present new and recent work by William Lamson and Michelle Segre in two concurrent exhibitions this summer.
For over twenty years New York-based artist Michelle Segre has produced idiosyncratic sculptures and drawings that continue to elude easy categorization. Earlier work from the 1990s include meticulous wax enlargements of giant fungi and richly imagined ink drawings of fissured landscapes that suggest something biological, yet unfamiliar. In a recent turn toward gestural abstraction, Segre constructs freestanding assemblages using reworked armatures and recycled materials from older works in combination with rocks, shells, milk crates, papier-mâché, colored yarn, and plaster. Decidedly low tech and a bit scary, the scrappy surfaces of her sculptures are fragile to the point of near-disintegration. Yet, beneath the seemingly haphazard juxtapositions lies a delicate precision holding everything in check, while alluding to complex systems beyond the reach of ordinary logic. Underlying it all is an improvisational goofiness matched by a well-versed formal rigor and a host of art historical antecedents including Surrealism, Arte Povera, Pop, and Process Art.
This exhibition will present new sculpture alongside earlier work offering a fuller reading of Segre's experimentation with new forms and her intuitive, highly personal approach to materials.
Michelle Segre was born in Israel in 1965. She lives and works in New York City. Recent solo exhibitions include Lost Songs of the Filaments at Derek Eller Gallery in New York City (2012); Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2010); and Derek Eller Gallery (North Room) in New York City (2010). Selected group exhibitions include Hot Time Tub Machine at Canada in New York City (2012); Awards Exhibition at American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City (2011); Broodwork: It's About Time, curated by Rebecca Niederlander and Iris Regn at Otis Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art in Los Angeles (2011); and The Visible Vagina at David Nolan Gallery in New York City (2010).Segre has a B.F.A. degree from Cooper Union School of Art in New York and teaches at School of Visual Arts in New York and Laguardia Community College, CUNY.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color brochure with an essay by David Brody.
William Lamson: A Certain Slant of Light
This exhibition will include recent videos, photographs, and site-specific installations. At the core of William Lamson's projects is an ongoing quest to reconcile two opposing views— the artist seemingly in calm control of his environment and, alternately, struggling mightily against the forces of nature and time. In 2010 Lamson’s playful and strenuous interactions with his environment took him to the Mojave Desert to produce A Line Describing the Sun. Traversing the landscape in a rolling contraption equipped with a mirror and a Fresnel lens, the artist burned a 366-foot arced line into the dried desert mud. Lamson's investigations call to mind the efforts of earthwork artists in the late 1960s and early '70s, but with a decidedly anti-heroic and absurdist twist. For this exhibition, Lamson will create an expansive wall drawing using multi-colored candles laid horizontally in a single line across a 60-foot shelf. He will ignite the candles at opposite ends and after the candles burnout, the residual smoke and wax will bifurcate the wall with black smoke above and colorful drips of melted wax below. This action is typical of Lamson’s ability to wrest poetic ramifications from a simple gesture played out over time.
William Lamson was born in Arlington, Virginia in 1977. He lives and works in New York City. Recent solo exhibitions include Action for the Delaware at Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado (2013); Mercy of the Waves at Whittier College in Whittier, California (2013); Architecture of the Invisible: Andrea Galvani William Lamson atTatiana Kourochinkina in Barcelona, Spain (2012); Divining Meteorology at Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana (2011); Action for the Paiva at Moving Image in London (2011); On Earth at Kunsthalle Erfut in Erfut, Germany (2010); A Line Describing The Sun at the Boiler in Brooklyn, New York (2010); and Long Shot at Artspace in New Haven, Connecticut (2009). Selected group exhibitions include Light and Landscape at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York (2012); No One Is An Island atLMCC Gallery at Governor’s Island in New York City (2011); and A Line Describing The Sun at Pierogi in Brooklyn, New York (2010). Lamson received a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire in 2000 and an M.F.A. degree from Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, New York in 2006.
The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color brochure with an interview with the artist and Adam Frelin.
Supported by the UAlbany Office of the President and the Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, University Auxiliary Services (UAS), and the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. 
For further information on exhibitions and programs, call (518) 442-4035.
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Media contact: Naomi Lewis, Exhibition & Outreach Coordinator, nlewis@albany.edu