The Hope College De Pree Art and Gallery will open the academic year with the exhibition “Gang Chant,” featuring work by the college’s 2018 Borgeson Artist-in-Residence, Caleb Kortokrax, from Wednesday, Aug. 22, through Friday, Sept. 21.
Kortokrax, will deliver an artist’s talk on the exhibition’s final day, Friday, Sept. 21, at 4 p.m. in Cook Auditorium of the De Pree Art Center and Gallery. A closing reception will follow in the gallery on Friday, Sept. 21, from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
The public is invited to the exhibition, artist’s talk and closing reception. Admission to each is free.
In his artist’s statement about the exhibit, Kortokrax says his work “reanimates the idiosyncratic language of illuminated manuscripts of the Romanesque era in England by expanding its pictorial depth and putting it in conversation with his own notion of abstraction, perception, and experiential color.”
Kortokrax is an American painter living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. Rooted in the interdisciplinary spirit, his paintings are an exercise in unlearning and relearning how to see.
He received his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art’s LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting and his BSFA from Valparaiso University in Studio Art and Art Education. Recent solo exhibitions include: Carroll Community College, Westminster, Maryland; Stevenson University, Stevenson, Maryland; Brauer Museum of Art (portrait unveiling), Valparaiso, Indiana; and Canterbury Salon, Baltimore, Maryland.
The recent body of work builds bridges between disparate painting traditions and time periods. In the process of making a painting, he resamples quality material traditions of the past into the current omnidimensional state of imagery. Through combining past and present visual signals in his studio process, he reanimates the painted image.
The Borgeson Artist-in-Residence program is hosted by the college’s Department of Art and Art History, and was created through the generosity of Hope alumni Nancy and Clarke Borgeson. The 12-week summer residency supports the creation of new work through provision of a stipend as well as studio and living space on Hope’s campus. The artist-in-residence meets with department students and alumni, and concludes the residency with a solo exhibition and artist’s lecture at the De Pree Art Center and Gallery.
The De Pree Art Center and Gallery is located at 275 Columbia Ave., between 10th and 13th streets. The gallery is open Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.