Tomáš Kubínek

Tomáš Kubínek is the wildest thing to fly out of Canada since geese! His one-man show has captivated audiences of all ages with its outrageous theatrics, surreal feats, and mind-boggling “miracles.” The New York Times proclaims that Kubínek is a “magician, clown, and comic whose jokes and ad-libs bring giggles from youngsters and guffaws from adults.” Part vaudeville, part improv, and completely magical, this artist of international renown leaves his audiences with a comically altered view of life’s creative possibilities.

Friday, February 13
Concert Hall 7:00 pm
$30, $25, $15; Special for Five College Students and Youth 17 and under $10

Hot 8 Brass Band

New Orleans’ own Hot 8 Brass Band captures the rhythm and the pulse of the city’s magnificent and celebratory street music. Hot 8 performs music of the honored Second Line tradition, infusing the funk and energy that makes New Orleans music loved around the world. Longtime featured artists at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Hot 8 Brass Band was recently featured in the Spike Lee documentary When the Levees Broke. Don’t miss this exciting musical odyssey that captures the timeless spirit and soul of “The Big Easy.”

Friday, February 6, 8:00 PM
Bowker Auditorium
$25, $15; Five College Students and Youth 17 and under $15

How can you ignore that exciting description! Go to the show and then leave us a comment to tell us what you think! Be a critic! Be a fan!

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Recognized worldwide for its exuberant, athletic and eclectic approach to dance, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago has been an innovative force in contemporary dance for over three decades. This program features the fluid yet unpredictable movements of choreographer Doug Varone’s latest work, The Constant Shift of Pulse. This intricate and visually powerful piece illuminates the purity of movement, as 15 Hubbard Street dancers test the boundaries of trust and release across an engaging emotional and physical landscape.

“Take a deep breath, because Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is going to take your breath away.” The Washington Post

When: Wednesday, February 4, 7:30 PM
Where: Concert Hall
Tickets: $40, $30, $15; Five College Students and Youth 17 and under $15

If you’ve seen this show or plan to, please leave a comment and let us know what you think! Be a critic! Be a fan!

Sheron Rupp: Dialogue With a Collection

This exhibition is the second in a series of exhibitions to take place at the University Gallery in which artists are invited to integrate their own works with pieces they select from the University Gallery’s works-on-paper collection, which includes over 2600 contemporary prints, drawings, and photographs.

This exhibition features the work of Northampton photographer and UMass grad Sheron Rupp alongside works she will select and place in direct dialogue with her own recent photographs. Rupp’s photographs have been exhibited at museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Cleveland Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, DeCordova Museum, among many others.

Wednesday, February 4 – Sunday, March 29
University Gallery
Free and open to the Public

Miroslaw Balka

The exhibition “Miroslaw Balka: Lightworks”shows a selection of video works by the internationally acclaimed Polish sculptor. This is the artist’s first solo American museum exhibition to focus on his new video installations.

Born in 1958 in Warsaw, Poland, notions of history and the residue of memory weigh heavily in Miroslaw Balka’s approach to his art. His poetic works, recalling the tragedies of Western European history such as the Holocaust, memorialize events through symbolic abstraction rather than discrete monument. His video works of memory and forgetfulness, presence and absence, meditate on what history leaves behind — the psychic repercussions alluded to in abstracted object — and ties it to the body and the memory of those living in the present.

Miroslaw Balka’s work has been the subject of many one-person exhibitions internationally, including the Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo; Kunsthalle Bielefeld; Tate Gallery, London; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; and Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. The artist was the representative of Poland at the 1993 Venice Biennale.

Thursday, February 5 – Sunday, March 29, 2009
University Gallery
Free and open to the public

Maggie Nowinski: Swallowed

A large scale multi media installation by Maggie Nowinski

Maggie Nowinski: Artist Statement

Plastic water bottles exist in the daily periphery of our environments, like the tap, tap, tapping of a leaking faucet, the ticking of a clock counting down to a dangerous event. As they assimilate into the corners of our environments, we swallow the methods of the bottled water industry that manufacture and advertise their contents using notions of purity and health.

Obsessed by an awareness of plastic water bottles I started collecting and working with them. Since late 2007 I have been developing a project that explores my relationship with the plastic water phenomenon. Looking at my own discomfort about participating in the world I live in, physically and psychologically, as I continually adjust to the sensation of impending doom that comes from living in today’s world, I explore the internalization of anxiety, the absorption of customary practices as normal and the impact of social and commercial processes on the individual. When I drink bottled water, the process is paradoxical – rejuvenating yet emotionally numbing. Swallowed will culminate in an installation including hundreds of photographs, thousands of plastic water bottles, video projects, audio recordings and drawings.

When we drink water we experience a somatic moment at the site where the external and internal meet – a primitive experience of a basic need being met. Plastic bottling has invaded this moment. We drink plastic water, part of a system that extends beyond the simple and immediate practice of drinking water. The residue of this process leaves internal traces in the body as it passes through our bodies – evidenced in the quenching of thirst, urinating and sweating.

When:
Wednesday, January 21 – Monday, February 23