January 30, 2009
Writer and contact: Deb Banerjee, NEH museum (435) 797-8207, deborah.banerjee@usu.edu
VISITING ARTIST’S LECTURE AND DISCUSSION AT UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM
LOGAN — The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, located on the campus of Utah State University in Logan, will host visiting artist Sean Duffy Monday, Feb. 9, in an artist’s lecture. He speaks at 7 p.m. in the Eccles Conference Center (approximately 550 N. 900 East, Logan) on the USU campus.
Earlier Monday at 1 p.m., Duffy will join artist Karen Carson in a gallery discussion at the museum (approximately 1100 E. 675 North) with various professors, students and members of the general public. Discussion topics will include differences between ordinary objects and extraordinary objects, commodity culture and the artist, why readymade art is still shocking and various objects in the “Uses of the Real” exhibition. The discussion takes place in the upper gallery of The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. All events are free and open to the public.
Duffy is an artist whose work is in the permanent collection of the USU museum. His sculpture “Fortress,” a combination of furniture used for work and leisure, is featured in the museum’s exhibition “Uses of the Real: Selections from the Permanent Collection.” The exhibition looks at how everyday objects are transformed into art and how realism has been reintroduced in the contemporary art world.
Duffy’s work focuses on the sculptural transformation of objects such as filing cabinets, cars and audio equipment. His previous work includes a “grove” of speakers and wire that create a sound sculpture viewers can activate with vinyl records. Duffy’s work also includes a record player rigged with three tone arms that simultaneously plays unmusical grooves, graphics from early video games evoking geometric abstraction and drawings created out of macramé. In the summer of 2008, he completed an art installation at the Miami Art Museum using a Toyota Land Rover and speakers made from 14 red one-gallon gas cans.
“Duffy’s beautifully crafted transformative works are sly critiques that pack an antiestablishment punch,” art critic Michael Duncan wrote in “Art in America.”
Gallerist Susanne Vielmetter said repetition plays an important part in Duffy’s work.
“At the center of Duffy’s work is a fascination with the phenomenon of repetition, the cyclical reoccurrence of movements in popular culture as well as in art, and such connected strategies as recycling and sampling,” she said. “From these explorations Duffy has questioned the relationships between the original and the copy, between the authentic and the knock-off and the sense of detachment that happens each time something is repeated or recycled.”
Duffy received his bachelor’s in visual arts and political science from the University of California at San Diego and his master’s of fine arts from the University of California at Irvine. The artist has recently exhibited his art in Germany, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, El Salvador and New York.
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art is located on the USU campus at 650 North 1100 East, Logan, Utah, 84322. The museum is open Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, noon-4 p.m. The museum is closed Sundays, Mondays and holidays. Suggested admission donation $3 per person, members and USU faculty, student and staff with valid I.D. are free. The museum is accessible to persons with disabilities. Limited parking is available. For more information, contact the museum at (435) 797-0163 or 797-1414 or visit the museum’s Web site (http://www.usu.edu/artmuseum/).
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Museum-Sean-Duffy