UAB Briefs: Art galore coming to AEIVA, honors for UAB inventor

Welcome to another installment of UAB Briefs, in which we keep track of interesting people and events on campus.

Know people, places and programs on the UAB campus that deserve a mention? Email Iron City Ink at sydney@starnespublishing.com or jchambers@starnespublishing.com

Art Galore

Lovers of contemporary art should make a point to visit the Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts at UAB beginning in late January.

The museum will offer an impressive array of contemporary art, with two large gallery exhibitions and its first-ever artist residency.

Better art through pharmaceuticals

Artist Beverly Fishman explores the role of the pharmaceutical industry in health care in “Another Day in Paradise,” an exhibition on display at AEIVA from Jan. 20-March 18, according to a UAB news release. There will be a free opening reception on Fri., Jan. 20, from 6-8 p.m.

Fishman, AEIVA curator John Fields and Dr. Richard E. Powers, a professor of neuropathology in the UAB School of Medicine, will take part in a panel discussion in the AEIVA Lecture Hall at 5 p.m., prior to the reception.

Drawing on the minimalists and pop artists of the 1960s and 1970s, Fishman blurs the line between painting and sculpture while investigating the way the pharmaceutical industry markets its products to consumers. She fabricates two-dimensional, geometric compositions as three-dimensional painting/sculpture hybrids, each modeled after a specific brand of medication, according to Fields.

Fields explained more precisely how the artist blends painting and sculpture. Her work “references brand-name medications, so the physical attributes of the pieces mimic the actual pills, but hanging them on the wall and putting such an emphasis on the color, it’s hard not to call them paintings,” he said.

“Beverly’s work has an obvious awareness of its place in an art historical context,” Fields said. “The work also encourages a dialogue about a very contemporary issue – the pharmaceutical industry – that feels urgent and relevant.”

All that said, Fishman’s exhibition should be enjoyable, as well, according to Fields.

“The work is also simply beautiful and striking with a demanding presence, especially in person,” he said.

Fishman – artist-in-residence and head of the painting department at Cranbrook Academy of Art – has done solo shows in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Chicago and Los Angeles and won many grants and awards.

New images from old

Brooklyn, N.Y., artist Zach Nader will present an exhibition of his photo-based imagery called “fly-back” at AEIVA from Jan. 20-March 18, according to a UAB news release. A free opening reception will be held at AEIVA on Fri., Jan. 20, from 6-8 p.m.

Nader’s reworking of existing photographic imagery has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including a video installation on 23 billboards in Times Square in New York City.

The artist, according to the news release, uses digital means – including automated software techniques – to deconstruct familiar source images from fashion and advertising to create complex new works that reflect the unending barrage of pictures that saturate the contemporary experience

“Through the manipulation and deconstruction of hyper-processed and often contrived advertising images, I look for ways to set the subject against the image itself — image against image, software against image — while also using software scripts as tools for mark-making,” Nader said.

“Through the deconstruction of codified, commodified pictures, Nader transfigures banal source imagery into alarming, beautifully intricate tapestries of fragmented space, color and texture,” said exhibition co-curator and UAB art teacher Jared Ragland.

A visit from an Angel

Colombian artist Jessica Angel will live in Birmingham for 14 weeks to create a large-scale, site-specific art installation – “Facing the Hyperstructure” – at AEIVA, according to a UAB news release

Angel will take over the lobby to create the installation – to be unveiled for public view March 31 – and will work with AEIVA staff and students from the Department of Art and Art History students.

She will also be the first artist to do a residency at AEIVA, which opened in 2014.

A New York City resident, Angel uses a variety of materials, including cut vinyl, paint and wallpaper, to transform architectural interiors by distorting the viewer’s visual perspective, and her installations enable collaboration between such disciplines as art, music, science and philosophy, the release states.

The smallest of the three AEIVA galleries will serve as Angel’s studio and will be open to the public during normal hours of operation.

An exhibition documenting the creation of the installation will be displayed in the small gallery for the duration of the spring semester.

The art students and AEIVA interns will work closely with Angel in building the installation, and these types of experiences with visiting artists are important career-builders for students, according to AEIVA curator John Fields.

“There is absolutely no shortage of talented artists, and being technically skilled isn’t enough on its own,” Fields told Iron City Ink.

Working with a visiting artist of Angel’s caliber has several “invaluable” benefits for students, Fields said – “Building networks through these interactions, being introduced to outside perspectives that are different from those of your immediate external influences, working on projects that are more ambitious than your usual coursework, and seeing as many real-life examples of artists making a career out of their specific abilities – because no two artists’ careers look the same.”

Hosting residencies by artists like Angel can also help AEIVA, a very young institution, to build its reputation, according to Fields. “There are only so many institutions with the resources to allow an artist to complete an ambitious project of this scale, (and) this can a very appealing prospect for many artists,” he said.

“If we can give nationally established artists the opportunity to develop and execute these type of large-scale, site-specific projects and make sure they have a great experience while they are here, then building this reputation – combined with a consistently solid exhibition program – will put us in a great position down the road.”  

Honoring a UAB inventor

Donald J. Buchsbaum, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology in the UAB School of Medicine, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, according to a news release. He is one of 175 inventors picked for the 2016 class of fellows.

He and the others will be inducted into the academy during a conference in April at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston, the release states.

Buchsbaum – one of six UAB faculty members to become an NAI fellow – is a leader in the field of monoclonal antibodies and their use for cancer therapy, either alone or along with chemotherapy or radiation.

He holds 18 United States and 143 foreign patents and patent applications licensed to two companies and has published 750 journal articles, book chapters and abstracts.