UAM exhibits explore diverse subject matter

Three new art exhibitions will have opening receptions at New Mexico State University’s Art Museum at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 22. These exhibitions are free and open to the public and will run through Sept. 16.

“Cara Despain: Specter,” on view in the UAM’s Contemporary Gallery, is an immersive multimedia exhibition featuring work by Miami-based artist Cara Despain. Using sculptural and video-based installations created with found objects and archival film from the 1940s-60s, Despain explores the irreversible environmental consequences and hidden psychological and microscopic health effects left in the wake of nuclear weapons development and testing across the Southwest.

“Agnes Martin & Karen Yank: Meditations on Mentor and Student” will be on display in the Bunny Conlon Modern & Contemporary Art Gallery. This exhibition explores the work and intersecting lives of the artists Agnes Martin and Karen Yank. For nearly 17 years, Yank and Martin met weekly as a friendship and mentorship flourished.

Featured in this exhibition are a selection of Martin’s lithographs on vellum, whose complex and meditative grids are indicative of the artist’s style, which impacted upon Abstract expressionism, Minimalism, and Transcendentalism. Yank’s steel wall-based sculptures reference nature and convey abstract emotional content in minimalist/maximalist forms.

“Wild Pigment Project” curated by Wild Pigment Project’s founding director Tilke Elkins will be on display in the Mullennix Bridge Gallery. This group exhibition, which originated at form & concept gallery in Santa Fe, brings together painters and dyers, ink-makers and ceramicists, researchers, scientists and traditional cultural practitioners to explore pigments found in plants, minerals and the industrial waste stream.

“Cara Despain: Specter” forms a larger conversation happening across the Southwest, running concurrently with shows at the Las Cruces Branigan Cultural Center and The El Paso Museum of Art, both which tackle the environmental, biological, mental and physical effects of nuclear development across rural communities of the U.S. All three exhibitions will include programming events throughout the summer. Admission to all programming is free and open to the public. For more information and a calendar with associated programs and dates visit uam.nmsu.edu.

The University Art Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1308 E. University Ave.

For more information, visit the University Art Museum at uam.nmsu.edu, call 575-646-2545, or email artmuseum@nmsu.edu.