The Barrick Museum presents Kveck, Russ & Stellmon: Break Ups & Tear Downs, running from Oct. 23 – Jan. 23. These three Las Vegas artists offer unique bodies of work that spring from a common practice of breaking down their subject, then reorganizing and reordering the pieces. The results, whether paintings, collages, photographs, or constructions, are stunning and thoughtful revisualizations of contemporary themes. The work of each artist reflects distinct style and technique, perfected during careers as highly regarded professionals.
“This exhibition will be powerful both visually and in social commentary,” says Barrick Museum program director Aurore Giguet. Wendy Kveck incorporates found images from art history, contemporary media, and princess coloring books into her work as cultural signifiers of excess, desire, anxiety, fear, regret, and loss; JK Russ creates surreal landscapes using found images from magazines, juxtaposing fashion icons with images from the natural world creating dream-like meditations on gender and sexuality; and Erin Stellmon uses mixed media collage to represent the cycle of destruction and rebuilding that we often see in Las Vegas.
A public opening reception will be held Oct. 23 from 6 – 8 p.m.
More About the Artists
Wendy Kveck is a visual artist from the Chicago area who lives and works in Las Vegas. Through her work in painting, drawing, collage, and performance she examines images of women from art history and contemporary media as cultural signifiers of excess, desire, anxiety, fear, regret, and loss. Her interest in performance as a reflective, reactive, and transformative action has been stimulated by the examples of early and contemporary feminist artists. In her recent work she has used food and drink imagery to represent women as both consumers and consumed.
Erin Stellmon is a multi-disciplinary artist from Oregon who lived in Las Vegas for more than a decade. Her community-focused practice explores local manifestations of transience, memory, and reinvention. In her mixed-media collage work she frequently emphasizes the visual fragmentation of the compositions in order to highlight the cycles of destruction and reinvention that she perceives are endemic to the Las Vegas municipality’s civic culture.
About the Barrick Museum
The UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum, a public arts unit under the UNLV department of art and the College of Fine Arts, strives to provide a welcoming environment in which students, members of the university community, Southern Nevada residents and the public in general can study and learn by directly experiencing works of art. Our goal is to enhance the visitor's understanding of art as an enduring human endeavor and to promote visual literacy for all patrons. To this end, the museum acquires, exhibits, interprets, and preserves works of art representative of past and present cultures, and artistic creativity.
For current program and exhibition information, call 702-895-3381 or visit unlv.edu/barrickmuseum.
Hours
- Mondays - Fridays: 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
- Thursdays until 8 p.m.
- Saturday: 12 p.m.–5 p.m.
- Closed Sundays and state and federal holidays.
Cost
Free. Suggested voluntary contribution: $5 for adults; $2 for children and seniors.
About the University
UNLV is a doctoral-degree-granting institution of 28,000 students and 3,300 faculty and staff. Founded in 1957, the university offers more than 220 undergraduate, master's and doctoral degree programs. UNLV is located on a 332-acre campus in dynamic Southern Nevada and is classified in the category of Research Universities (high research activity) by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
