G. Daniel Massad: Loading the Work New Palmer Museum of Art Exhibition
February 6, 2008
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The Palmer Museum of Art announces G. Daniel Massad: Loading the Work. The exhibition will be on view at the museum February 24 through May 25, 2008.
Working out of his studio in south-central Pennsylvania, G. Daniel Massad has become one of the best-known contemporary artists working in the pastel medium. His works are in such collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. With arduous technique, Massad "loads" his works in pastel with meanings that may find no better outlet, no clearer articulation, than in his carefully layered and meticulously inscribed picture planes. The works contain several literary, artistic, and intensely personal references. These sumptuous drawings contain yet another significant layer of vernacular and universal symbolism, formed by a labyrinth of darkness and variegated surfaces, prompting our reconsideration of preconceived ideas of realism and the commonplace.
Massad's Stele, in the collection of the Palmer Museum of Art, demonstrates the lengths to which the artist has gone to fill his compositions with personal meanings. Although typically associated with classical antiquity, the tombstone-like design here commemorates the father of his life partner-visible upon close inspection of the work are the HFE (the father's initials), the iron padlock and, inscribed in the brick, a map of Wisconsin and a Masonic compass. Whatever else these emblems are, they are also those precious "things left behind" in everyday life, to quote the title of one of the featured works.
In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a gallery talk and performance on Sunday, February 24 at 2:00 p.m. Six Wooden Blocks, a contemporary poem by Sally MacNall, so inspired artist G. Daniel Massad and composer Scott Eggert that they each created their own artistic responses. Massad's painting, part of the G. Daniel Massad: Loading the Work exhibition, and Eggert's composition, also titled Six Wooden Blocks, will be featured in a gallery talk and performance in the Palmer Museum galleries. Karen Bentley Pollick, violin; Dennis Parker, cello; and Justin O'Dell, clarinet, will perform Eggert's original composition. Cosponsored by the Suzanne H. Arnold Foundation.
Please contact Leo Mazow, Curator of American Art, for more information on the exhibition at 814-865-7673 or through email at lgm11@psu.edu.
Contact: Ali Bradley, 814-863-9182, abradley@psu.edu