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Artscope Magazine | November/December 2020

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UMass Amherst

“A HORSE WALKS INTO A BAR” AND OTHER CURIOUS NOTIONS AT HAMPDEN GALLERY

// Artscope Online, Current Exhibits, Visual Arts

by Hannah Carrigan

D. Dominick Lombardi’s curation of whit is unmistakable. In a fine arts show at UMassAmherst’s Hampden Gallery featuring works by 26 artists, and with a theme as broad as humor, cohesiveness is not a given. And yet, while “A Horse Walks into a Bar” contains a myriad of mediums and styles, its parts come together to form a wonderfully silly, provocative and subtly nostalgic whole. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of “A Horse Walks Into A Bar” is the innovative and unique use of materials and methods to achieve a sense of playfulness and absurdity. Among the most intriguing of these is Lucy White’s Band-Aid prints, “Sex Pistols,” 2005, “Peace Panty,” 2006, and “I Hate You Brief  XL,” 2006. In her signature minimalist style, with an edge of art-poking-fun-at-art, White offers viewers an easy avenue into weighty issues like gender inequality and gun violence. Other exciting uses of … [Read more...] about “A HORSE WALKS INTO A BAR” AND OTHER CURIOUS NOTIONS AT HAMPDEN GALLERY

Ellen Grobman, Last Minute, 2017, oil on wood.

CORNERED: ELLEN GROBMAN AT HAMPDEN GALLERY, UMASS AMHERST

// Artscope Online, Cornered, Exhibits, Interview, Visual Arts

by Brian Goslow

Amherst, MA - For Amherst, Massachusetts-based painter Ellen Grobman, painting sounds like an exhausting and exhilarating process in which she starts with an idea, aims to pull it in a new direction and then sees what’s left when she tries to leave as little of the original thought as possible by the time she’s finish. Her website describes her work as being powered by, “This drive to bring something into being, disrupt it, and then flirt with its destruction — the boundary of something existing and then not.” Depending on the piece, there are touches of 19th century furniture wallpaper patterns, abstract expressionism, fauvism, symbolism and whatever connections each swash of paint ignites in her mind. These explorations continue in her current exhibition, “There, Not There,” on view through March 31 at Hampden Gallery in the Southwest Residential Area at the University of … [Read more...] about CORNERED: ELLEN GROBMAN AT HAMPDEN GALLERY, UMASS AMHERST

Xylor Jane, "Magic Square for Finding Lost People," 2014, oil on panel, 24” x 24”, private collection, courtesy Pettit Art Partners, New York.

XYLOR JANE: AN EXTRAORDINARY ARTIST WITH A NATIONAL REPUTATION

// Current Issue, Issue Articles, March/April 2019

by Marguerite Serkin

Through the ages, thinkers and mystics have recognized that numbers speak to the order of things, but artistic visual expression of this discreet order has been historically intermittent. Mathematical constructs such as the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio appear in a broad spectrum of natural features, including snail shells, beehives, pine cones and our spiral galaxy; yet, their alignment with pure mathematics remains mysterious and for many, sacred. Greenfield, Massachusetts-based artist Xylor Jane follows in the footsteps of da Vinci, Dürer, Dali, Juan Gris and Le Corbusier in bringing the magic of numbers into visual form. Jane’s selected paintings of “Counterclockwise,” on exhibit at the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst, incorporate the perfection of mathematics, coupled with the drama of human interpretation. Pointillism defines much of Jane’s … [Read more...] about XYLOR JANE: AN EXTRAORDINARY ARTIST WITH A NATIONAL REPUTATION

Sinners #11 (Lester Lanin Goes to College), 2016, acrylic medium, acrylic paint, album cover, artist’s frame, salvaged wood, nails, screws, plaster, joint compound, latex primer, latex paint, 15” x 15”.

EXAMINING THE MYTH WITHIN: LOMBARDI’S GODS AND MONSTERS

// Current Issue, Issue Articles, September/October 2017, Visual Arts

UNIVERSITY SPOTLIGHT D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI: SAINTS, SINNERS AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS HAMPDEN GALLERY, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST 131 SOUTHWEST CIRCLE, AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS SEPTEMBER 10 THROUGH 29 by J. Fatima Martins There are gods and monsters in each of us. One person’s hero is another person’s villain; as Joseph Campbell famously wrote, “You could be a local god, but for the people whom that local god conquered, you could be the enemy.” In the exhibition statement for “Saints, Sinners and the Collective Unconscious,” artist D. Dominick Lombardi wrote that his work is his “personal freedom.” Our collective history and, therefore, unconscious, is haunted by saviors and destroyers, imaginative human-made entities derived from external and internal emotions and conditions. Our conscious struggle to break free from a mutual and vague imprisonment … [Read more...] about EXAMINING THE MYTH WITHIN: LOMBARDI’S GODS AND MONSTERS

Question Bridge At UMass Amherst

// March/April 2016, Uncategorized

Black Males Get The Conversation Going by John P. Stapleton Over the past few years, there has been an ongoing conversation about race in the United States. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is rallying against the shooting deaths of black Americans by police officers and is constantly met with controversy from those who don’t find the problem to be about race. Despite where one stands on the issue, a lot of the backlash against the aforementioned movement touts negative stereotypes about black men in America, but also ignores the realities that marginalize them. The travelling video exhibit, “Question Bridge: Black Males,” explores this and simply examines what it’s like growing up as a black man in America. Directed by Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith, Kamal Sinclair and Chris Johnson, the video was released in 2012 after piecing together testimonies from over 150 men … [Read more...] about Question Bridge At UMass Amherst

Head At Umass Amherst

// November/December 2015

Portraits Take It From The Top by John Paul Stapleton The Hampden Gallery is almost hidden in the city that is UMass Amherst’s south- west residential area. Its current show, “Head,” fits right in with this setting, as if it were in a metropolitan arts district. Curator D. Dominick Lombardi has brought together contemporary work from all over the United States, Europe and Asia. Every piece shows the breadth of representation that comes with portraiture. Lombardi placed textile pieces by China Marks as the colorful lure to the first room of the gallery. “Drive He Said” centers around a head made up of landscape features against various scenes of cars on the road. Travel is obviously the formative point for the subject, with a head made up of the scenes that can be found on a long road trip. On the opposite wall, Lombardi’s “Sacco and Vanzetti” is another surreal … [Read more...] about Head At Umass Amherst