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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Local Composer and Artist to Exhibit New Paintings in Downtown Urbana |
Current rating: 0 |
by Benjamin Grosser
(No verified email address) |
15 Feb 2001
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Artist Benjamin Grosser will be exhibiting paintings at Sandwich Boy,
212 W. Main St. in downtown Urbana, from March 10 through April 6. An opening reception will be held at Sandwich Boy from 6 to 8:30 p.m., on Saturday, March 24. The public is invited. |
Artist Benjamin Grosser will be exhibiting paintings at Sandwich Boy,
212 W. Main St. in downtown Urbana, from March 10 through April 6.
This event marks the first time Mr. Grosser, a well-known local composer,
has publicly exhibited his visual art. An opening reception will be held
at Sandwich Boy from 6 to 8:30 p.m., on Saturday, March 24. The public
is invited.
Grosser's works are abstract in content, and his primary medium is oil
on canvas. Composer, writer, and colleague Rick Burkhardt states:
The colors and shapes in Benjamin Grosser's paintings haunt each other,
provoke and defy each other: red reinvents blue, and circles convince
you they are squares. Rude clarities turn mysterious. Even light has
its own intelligence, spilling selectively over the players from
unthinkable sources. Tiny specks infest large slabs--or is it the
other way around? When I look at these paintings I change my mind
ten times. Are there two circles or three hundred? Are there any
circles? What color are they? Certainties and mysteries go hand in
hand, and everything glows, often in secret. From within those secrets
these paintings reward long looks.
Grosser grew up in Champaign-Urbana. He received bachelor's and master's
degrees in music composition from the University of Illinois, where he
studied with Salvatore Martirano and Zack Browning. Grosser has been
active as a composer of both acoustic and computer-generated music, and
has produced numerous concerts over the last decade.
In addition to local performances through the U of I School of Music,
Grosser has had many performances around the world--most recently at the
ThreeTwo New Music Festival, held in New York City last October.
Grosser's music has been called "very loud and ugly" by the St. Louis
Riverfront Times, and he has been referred to as "an accomplished painter
of large canvases" by Art Calendar Magazine.
Grosser is manager of the Visualization, Media and Imaging Laboratory at
the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University
of Illinois.
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Editor's Note:
Members of the media are invited to preview artwork to be included in the
show, and to interview the artist by contacting him directly. High-quality
slides and/or scans of the artwork are available. |
See also:
http://www.itg.uiuc.edu/people/grosser/
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