For Immediate Release:  January 5, 2007
Contact:  Marsha Nishi Mullan    
610-328-8535     
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/

'Cabinet of Wonders' to Be Displayed in List Gallery Jan. 25 to Feb. 28

A "Cabinet of Wonders:  Marvelous Transformations and Other Accidental Images," an exhibition by Sue Johnson, will be presented at Swarthmore College in the List Gallery, Lang Performing Arts Center, from Thursday, Jan. 25, through Wednesday, Feb. 28. 

Johnson, the Steven Muller Distinguished Professor of the Arts and chair of the Art and Art History Department at St. Mary's College of Maryland, will also deliver a public lecture, "Wonder, Transformation and the Nature of Artifice," on Thursday, Jan. 25, at 4:30 p.m. in the Cinema, Lang Performing Arts Center. 

A List Gallery reception will immediately follow the talk from 5:30 to 7 p.m.  All events are free and open to the public and are made possible through a grant from the William J. Cooper Foundation.  List Gallery hours are Tuesdays through Sundays, 12-5 p.m.

Vision of the Cantaloupe Girl , detail, 2006.

In her mixed-media List Gallery installation, Johnson examines the interrelationships between history, science, art, and popular culture.  The exhibition presents new work and highlights from her ongoing body of work, "The Alternative Encyclopedia."  In the outer room of the gallery, Johnson's large-scale gouache paintings transform found surfaces, such as anatomical charts.  The artist will also display an array of over two dozen "object-poems," a series of surreal pairings of incongruous images painted during her summer 2006 residency in Salzburg, Austria. 

The inner room of the List Gallery features "Episodes from a Fantastic Landscape," a series of panoramic digital prints painted with gouache, which feature dreamscapes inspired by the commerce between art and popular culture.  Facing the panoramic prints, a wall installation of anthropomorphic toys and bizarre household objects gives insight into the artist's sources and concerns.

A concurrent exhibition of work by the artist titled "Cabinet of Wonders: Sources and Resources" will be on view in Swarthmore's McCabe Library presenting Johnson's artist's books and drawings together with selections from her personal collection of prints, books, and ephemera as well as archival materials from McCabe Library's collection. 

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