Visual authenticity or visual truth in a work of art has changed in its manifestation over time. In the Renaissance, authenticity meant a fidelity to nature and the representational appearance of the figure, objects, landscape, and narrative. Even within the parameters of this expectation, artists’ interpretations of veracity varied widely.

As photography and film provided increasingly comprehensive documentation and visual accuracy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, artists were given the freedom to explore other avenues of authenticity in their work. And visual truth was often explored in the very surfaces of works of art.

This surface became a place of encounter: a place where the artist encounters his or her own truth or identity. An artist’s fascination and obsession with the media is expressed. This new surface was at times illusory, but more often than not, it was liberated from a descriptive or narrative function.

Artists often choose to return to and confront this surface and within the edges of the work of art again and again because they to seek their own authentic identity. And in that search a record of that exploration is charted, and a metaphor for that search emerges.

This exhibition presents the “truth” of surfaces. The work of the exhibiting artists is authentic in that the artworks do not pretend to become anything more than what they are. There is a genuine authenticity in the relationship between artistic media and the surface on which it resides. And perhaps as significantly, in the process of discovering that surface, something beautiful, astonishing, and lasting is created.

The exhibiting artists include John Donnelly and Joshua Eiskamp, painting; Joel O’Dorisio, glass; Erin Clarkson, printmaking; Todd Leech, ceramics; Carla Roesch, encaustics; David Sapp, drawings; Stephen Tomasko, photography; Stephen Yusko, sculpture; and Jennifer Whitten, beadwork sculpture.

 

AUTHENTIC SURFACE | JUNE 27–JULY 25

SHUSH: KIMBERLY CHAPMAN PORCELAIN SCULPTURE | JUNE 27–JULY 25

BEST OF OHIO DESIGNER CRAFTSMEN | AUGUST 15–SEPTEMBER 12

MIKE WASEMANN PAINTING | AUGUST 15–SEPTEMBER 12

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Mansfield Art Center

700 Marion Avenue

Mansfield, Ohio 44906

mansfieldartcenter.org

419-756-1700