Black White Color Life

BLACK WHITE COLOR LIFE is an important opportunity for the SSU Art Gallery to present new work by two nationally recognized and highly regarded New York-based artists. The exhibition includes 52 works on paper—26 by each artist. Fendrich’s conté crayon drawings are inspired, in the artist’s words, by the “clarity and seeming simplicity of American abstraction during the 1930s—the decade before Abstract Expressionism took over.” She also finds inspiration in the conté crayon drawings of the 19th century French artist Georges Seurat and says her work is based on improvisation rather than carefully planned compositions. For Plagen’s, “What counts first is how my art looks. That’s supposed to draw you into the content, rather than the reverse.” His work combines painted abstract passages with elements of collage, including words and photo fragments. Plagen’s describes his art as the “orchestration of paint, paper, color, and surface.”

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.