Fine Art In Fresh Meadows
Chung-Cheng Art Gallery
By Azi Paybarah
Getting Started
Contemporary art finds a home inside the Chung-Cheng Art Gallery at Sun Yat Sen Hall. Tribune Photo by Josh Parish |
Museums and art galleries can have a reputation for being stuffy, elitist and just plain weird. Not quite so on the campus of St. John’s University.
The Chung-Cheng Art Gallery, located inside Sun Yat Sen Hall – an architectural masterpiece itself – is perfectly located to steer the energy of a college student and direct it to the nearest easel. The result: exhibits that combine intelligence with a pop culture appeal.
Digging In
Mary Fuchs is one of the student artists recently featured. She used her Warhol-like prints to depict a wide range of scenes, including: a hand holding a computer mouse, a fist next to a woman’s face, a hand holding a spray paint can, a motorist talking on a cell phone, and someone tying a piece of rubber around their arm, presumably before shooting up.
The style made famous by Warhol and his prints of Campbell Soup cans, Mick Jagger and Elvis Presley takes a turn towards the gritty, urban scene without getting offensive.
Another previously featured student was Allison Zagorski (from 1999). Her series of darkly painted canvases was smeared with what looks like a random smattering of colors. What exactly is depicted in the painting is secondary to the feeling it evokes in the visitor. It is the moody, smoky jazz lounge of painting.
Max Hergenrother’s exhibit showed the limitless potential of acrylic. His works include “The Prophecy,” where a big, scaly dragon and a hooded magician sit on either side of a crystal ball. The entire painting is bathed in green.
Another Hergenrother painting, entitled “Portrait of Joseph Adolphe,” shows a bald white man from the chest up, looking forward in a deadpan manner. In the top right corner is a small white box with the words “no postage necessary.” Across the man’s chest, where an arrest number would go if this were a mug shot, are the words, “business reply mail.” In a small black box over the man’s left shoulder are the words, “the envy of all fruit.”
In his self-portrait, a mustached and goateed Hergenrother is wearing a black leather jacket, Pink Floyd t-shirt, and donning a fire-red halo over his tilted head.
These and other works show how the gallery acts as a bridge between campus and culture.
For the Chung-Cheng Gallery, this is not a new attitude. The site has hosted exhibits with similar appeal before. Two years ago there was an exhibit entitled “Images from the Atomic Front,” which included paintings with names like: “The First Bomb at Bikini,” depicting a mushroom cloud, and “Garden at Hiroshima,” an earth-tone, barren scene with rays of light reaching out from behind a thick gray cloud.
Another collection entitled “Latin American Art in the 1990s” includes a naked woman squatting down to do some chores, grotesquely resembling a spider. Another, “El Sonado” depicts a young man looking through a sun-drenched window into an empty room.
Finishing Up
Upcoming exhibits include “Chinese American Painters in the Metropolitan Area (through Sept. 24), and the 10th Annual National Show (Oct. 4 to Dec. 19). Be sure to check out the latter, which is curated by professor Ross Barbera, known for his landscapes that present startling detail.
Chung-Cheng Art Gallery
St. John’s University
80-00 Utopia Parkway
Fresh Meadows, NY 11439
www.university-gallery.com
(718) 990-7476
10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Tue.-Thu.;
10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Fri.,
noon - 5 p.m. Sat.
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