Dowd Gallery to exhibit international collage works

10/24/2023 

From celebrity portraits made from recycled trash to ransom notes crafted with cut-out magazine letters, the art of collage — assembling different individual items to create a new whole with its own unique identity — has long been a part of modern culture.

Artists Maximo Tuja, who also goes by the name Max-o-matic, and Dominick Lombardi, have curated a visual exploration of more than 70 contemporary pieces of this increasingly present art form that will be exhibited in SUNY Cortland’s Dowd Gallery starting on Monday, Oct. 30.

Titled “Altered Logistics: Contemporary Collage and Appropriation Art,” the exhibition will be on view through Friday, Dec. 8, featuring multi-national artists from creative techniques including sculpture, mixed media and digital collage.

An opening reception and exhibition tour will be held in the gallery from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 2. Refreshments will be served. The event will host some of the local artists participating in the exhibition. An artist’s walkthrough will start at 5 p.m.

The exhibition is free and open to the public, as are the opening reception and all exhibition-related events.

Lombardi is a New York resident, artist, author and curator whose solo work comprised Dowd Gallery’s 2019 “High + Low: A Forty-five Year Retrospective” exhibition. For this latest project, he collaborated with Tuja, a Barcelona-based artist and image maker.  

“Altered Logistics” explores how the technique of collage has been used in visual art and how it has evolved to become common in the narrative reality of contemporary society.

“As I understand it, collage is already much more than an artistic technique,” Tuja states in Lombardo’s recent essay “Art of Collage,” published at Culturecatch.com.

“In our present society, collage has long been embraced as a means of engaging with reality,” Tuja continues. “From memes and social media feeds to music production, fashion and even our own identities — which often comprise a blend of diverse elements drawn from various contexts — the collage mindset subtly permeates our lives.”

Visit the Dowd Gallery website and social media for detailed information about yet-to-be-scheduled programs and events linked to “Altered Logistics.” They will include:

• Panel discussion. The event will focus on “Contemporary Collage.”
• Online discussion. Participants will meet on Webex to share their thoughts on the way collage has evolved in creative method.
• Contemporary collage workshop.

The gallery is in the Dowd Fine Arts Center on the corner of Prospect Terrace and Graham Avenue in Cortland. 

Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday with extended hours for programming until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. Visit the Dowd Gallery website for details about exhibiting artists, upcoming events or gallery availability. For more information, contact gallery assistant to the director Scott Oldfield ’06 at 607-753-4216.

“Altered Logistics” is supported by the Art and Art History Department.

TOP IMAGE: Canadian artist Kevin Mutch’s 2023 digital collage color print is titled “The Artist’s Brain Paints a Picture.”