Bannister Gallery 2024-25 Exhibitions

������Ƶ 3-D Faculty Exhibition

• August 29–September 20, 2024
• Opening Reception: Thursday, August 29, 4–7 pm, in the gallery

Bannister Gallery opens the 2024-25 exhibition schedule with our Annual Faculty Exhibition, which offers an opportunity for the community to experience first-hand the artistic talent that is in residence at ������Ƶ. These faculty artists are integral to the current aesthetic and conceptual dialogues present in our studio art department. Their practices include research-based and interdisciplinary methods that are at the core of contemporary art. ������Ƶ’s faculty artists exhibit widely and receive prestigious awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies. As a result, they encourage students by their example to think across boundaries. Collectively, these distinguished, award-winning artists bring a unique vision to the region’s cultural tapestry.

Enrico Pinardi

• October 3–25, 2024
• Opening Reception: Thursday, October 3, 4–7 pm, in the gallery (Speaker Presentation at 5 pm)

Enrico “Henry” Pinardi (1934-2021) taught in the ������Ƶ Art Department from 1967 to 1995. He was a sculptor, painter, and inspiration to so many young artists that traveled through the Art Department over the years at ������Ƶ. His work is a visual poetry that creates an atmosphere so saturated that it has an extraordinary power to transport and transform the viewer. In his art, he used color, line, volume, and form as a conduit for the interstice between the known and the unknown. His work stemmed from his own life story and allowed us a peek into a beautifully deep soul. This exhibition, curated by Professor Dianne Reilly, celebrates his life and art. 

Richard Whitten: Objects of Wonder

• On view November 7–December 6, 2024
• Opening Reception: Thursday, November 7, 4–7 pm, in the gallery
• Artist Talk: Thursday, November 21, 5 pm, Alex and Ani 138

Richard Whitten creates paintings which transport the viewer through the surface of the painting into a world of imagined architectural spaces. There, the viewer finds similarly imagined machines. The viewers are invited to bring the worlds inside the paintings to life – to propel the machine into motion – through sight and thought alone. The machines Whitten depicts have a variety of possible functions and are often inspired by the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance inventors. These machines tend to include elements that suggest motion, such as flywheels, gears, and ropes. It is Whitten’s belief that when the viewer tracks the potential movements of his machines, the paintings feel alive.

Graphic Design: Konkuk University

• January 23-February 7, 2025
• Opening Reception – Thursday, January 23rd, 4-6pm

Facilitated by ������Ƶ Graphic Design Professor Heemong Kim, Graphic Design: Konkuk University features selected works from graduating students studying at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. The university’s objective is to develop creative designers aware of their social responsibilities through an understanding of humanity, society, technology, philosophy and culture.

Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body: The Work of RaMell Ross

• February 20-March 21, 2025
• Opening Reception – Thursday, February 20th, 4-7pm
• Artist Talk  – Tuesday, March 18th, 5-6 PM, in the gallery

RaMell Ross – artist, filmmaker, writer, and liberated documentarian – released his Academy Award-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening in 2018, filming and photographing the residents of a rural community in the Black Belt region of Alabama that Ross calls his adoptive home. Through his large-format color photographs, he explores the meaning and mythology of the American South and of Black identity. Ross released his first photo book Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body in 2023 and presents a truncated look at this series with a new exhibition of large-scale photographs and mixed-media sculptures for Bannister Gallery at ������Ƶ. RaMell Ross is an Associate Professor of Visual Art at Brown University and received his MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. His latest film, Nickel Boys, earned nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2025 Academy Awards.

Lani Irwin & Alan Feltus - Selected Works

• April 3-25, 2025
• Artist Talk - Thursday, April 3rd, 4-5 PM, Alex and Ani Hall 138
• Opening Reception – Thursday, April 3rd, 5-7pm, in the gallery

Both Lani Irwin and Alan Feltus paint stunningly beautiful figurative paintings that always compel the viewer to stop and contemplate. They are quiet paintings that are both formally impeccable and psychologically intriguing. Feltus’ figures, both male and female, are ambiguously gendered and strangely simultaneously aware and unaware of each other. Irwin’s figures -– mostly female – are powerful magicians that confront the viewer head on. This exhibition, curated by Professor Richard Whitten, presents the works of these two exceptionally accomplished artists – who are married to each other – together in the same space, allowing the viewer to consider their paintings in conversation.

Alan Feltus, born in 1943 in Washington, D.C., has been represented by Forum Gallery in New York City since 1976. Lani Irwin, born in 1947 in Annapolis, MD, has exhibited widely in both the US and in Italy. Both artists’ work can be found in many public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. They have lived and worked near Assisi, Italy, since 1987 and have two sons.