On Display: Students Create Surrealist Dreamscapes

On display at the Zoller Gallery this week, Bloom Bloom is an experiences more than art.

Divorcing with reality and exploring the transcendental, the exhibition by second year grad student, Dana Harper, is an adventure with the surreal. With estranged colors, extravagant ornamentation and a design that pleads with you to wander inside; Bloom Bloom experiments with its viewer’s ability to get lost in the unreal.

The expansive instillation piece is hung up and illuminated with a vibrant array of reds and yellows to give the whole gallery an energized glow. Once inside, the work’s intricate construction has the hallucinogenic powers to take you into a dream state. Every cycle around Bloom Bloom, your eye discovers subtle differences or other elements you’d like for your mind to explore.

Across Curtain in the Patterson Gallery hangs the East-meets-West artwork of undergraduate, John Di Giovanni. In the exhibition, Celestial Union, Di Giovanni blends light fixtures, a patterned ground, mixed medium painting and installations to give viewers a perplexing experience. The theme, which pays homage to the panda, is a dedication to Di Giovanni’s long distance relationship. Like a panda who eats the inefficient bamboo over their natural carnivorous diet, Di Giovanni sees himself as starving his need for romantic attention in preference to an emotional fulfillment that isn’t always physically fulfilling.