Published Thursday, January 11th, 2024
Prior to the opening, Isaak will present her artist’s lecture at 3:45 p.m. in Gardner Auditorium.
Visiting artist Sophie Isaak’s exhibit “The person I am on vacation” opens Wednesday, Jan. 17, at 4:30 p.m. in Wayne State College’s Nordstrand Visual Arts Gallery, located on the main level of U.S. Conn Library.
An artist lecture at 3:45 p.m. in Gardner Auditorium precedes the opening, and both events are free and open to the public. The exhibit runs through March 20.
Isaak’s complex compositions integrate printmaking, drawing, and painting. The exhibit capture’s life’s contradictions with intense colors, awkward contours, and unconventional pairings.
“I create wildly shifting plots through often very wrong-feeling color choices,” explains Isaak. “Color is my most prized tool to betray urgent emotions. Interest in mood, emotion, and chaos arose from my attempts to understand the paradoxical nature of the world.
“How is it possible that I can love and hate the same thing simultaneously?” she continues. “How can I be so good and so bad? Why do I want something and then try to tear it apart? I harness forces of good and evil, beauty and repulsiveness, happiness and sadness, attraction and repulsion to convey tumultuous scenes in the world. By pushing opposite elements next to each other, I hope to reveal how disparate energies cohabit the same plane. These disruptions are meant to take the work to an unpredictable conclusion while confounding the viewer.”
Isaak is assistant professor of printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and studio art from the University of Vermont in Burlington, and master of arts and master of fine arts degrees in printmaking with a secondary concentration in painting from the University of Iowa. Her artwork has been featured throughout the U.S. in Ohio, Iowa, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Vermont.
The gallery is open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, and 3 to 7 p.m. Sunday. It is closed Saturday. Shows end at noon on closing day.
For more information on this exhibit or upcoming shows, visit www.wsc.edu/art-gallery or contact Dr. Andy Haslit, director of the Nordstrand Visual Arts Gallery and professor of art history at Wayne State, at [email protected].