New Installation at Tech’s Art Gallery Pops With Color

“Brilliant Optics: A Spectrum of Mediums and Color,” an exhibit of contemporary artwork, is now on display in Indiana Tech’s Franco D’Agostino Art Gallery. The collection, which is part of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s traveling exhibition series, will be in the D’Agostino Gallery through January 2017. It’s the first of four FWMoA collections Indiana Tech will be exhibiting through 2017.

“Brilliant Optics” hinges on the dominant theme of color. Each of the exhibiting artists are unafraid of brightness, vibrant hues and pumping up color saturation. The art in this exhibition share intense layers of color for an invigorating optical experience.

This exhibit revolves around color, a simple word but a complex theme. This concept was the guiding force for Josef Zimmerman’s curatorial journey throughout the United States to find the most adventurous use of color by today’s artists. What he found in the best work was that great use of color transcended mediums, and that subject matter and genre didn’t alone unify the work.

These artists use acrylic, oil, screen-printing, photography and ink to demonstrate Zimmerman’s cohesive vision of color. With this vision of unbounded color to govern his curating, an unexpected pattern emerged from this collection of work. Because of the bold colors, each artist’s subject matter was that much more active and dynamic, forming a kinship between these artists that, until this exhibition, was unknown.

Zimmerman says, “Color has the power to seduce us and the power to repulse us. What we know is that color can be a powerful symbol that plays a critical role in our visual world. Color makes us love things we see or it can do the opposite. Like an upbeat song with heartbreaking lyrics, bright, bold color can dramatically alter how we perceive the subject matter of artwork.” 

All are welcome to view “Brilliant Optics” from 8 a.m.-7 p.m. in the D’Agostino Art Gallery, which is located in Indiana Tech’s Academic Center.