University Of Miami Professors Lani Shapton and Kyle Trowbridge Exhibit Opening Reception
The UM Gallery
Wynwood Building
2750 NW 3rd Avenue, Suite 4
Miami, FL
 
The exhibition will run through Oct. 28, but viewing will be by appointment only after the reception. The UM Gallery is open every second Saturday from 2pm to 9pm; other viewing times are available by appointment.

Works explore the relationship of objects to memory and how technology alters the dynamics of relationships
 
Lani Shapton and Kyle Trowbridge examine how we view the past and how technology affects our present, in two contrasting exhibitions at the UM Gallery in the Wynwood art district. Both artists are professors in  the Department of Art and Art History, in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami. 
 
Shapton’s work deals with memories and objects that all become subject to the processes of immortalization, memorialization, recollection and loss. She feels minds are faulty cameras attempting to preserve our histories, so many people collect objects and photographs as reminders to stave off the loss of memory that occurs as life progresses. As the notions of memory and self converge, a dichotomous relationship is formed between disintegration and preservation.
 
Trowbridge’s newest paintings are at once abstract geometric paintings and functioning Quick Response (QR) codes. Their appearance, paint handling and palette reference past canons of abstract painting. Once scanned with the proper application, the paintings also generate text written by the artist. In his paintings, the old and new uncomfortably co-exist. The “digital” reading of the paintings and their intrusive words interrupt the impulse to read the paintings art historically, against the aspects of mid-century abstract painting. The confrontational language in Trowbridge’s words re-iterates this.
 
Lani Shapton is an artist and educator, currently a lecturer in printmaking at the University of Miami. She received her MFA in Printmaking from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and has exhibited in the 2011 Southern Graphics Print Conference and the 2012 Oso Bay Printmaking Biennial XVII, among others. Lark Books will publish her most recent work in 500 Prints on Clay in 2013.
 
Kyle Trowbridge is a native Floridian who lives and works in Miami. His work
has been exhibited internationally in Rome, Santo Domingo, Varna, San Juan, New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, and more recently, as a U.S. representative at the Vienna Biennale. He received his BFA from San Diego State University in 1995 and his MFA from the University of Miami in 1999, where he is currently employed full-time as a professor in the Department of Art and Art History.