A Lecture Series Where Artists Talk About The Work Of Others
Artists' talks are a tried and true format in which artists typically speak about themselves and their work, revealing (or obscuring) their inspirations and methodologies, their backgrounds and their present modes of thinking. Hallwalls still presents live and free artists' talks at the beginning of each exhibition opening and this past summer used the annual Members Exhibition as a means within which artists could do rapid 10-minute talks on their submitted artwork.
Each of those formats will continue at Hallwalls, but we decided for 2017/18 to devise a series that could insert a new angle into a conventional format.
TALK THE TALK is a new lecture series in which we've invited regional Western New York artists to present talks on other WNY artists, living or dead. We asked them to select artists they admire, artists who may have inspired them, artists whose work speaks to them sufficiently that they can then speak to us about them.
Joan Linder’s drawings express the tension between flatness and depth in subjects from junk mail to the asphalt of parking lots, revealing the hidden histories they conceal. Her work deals with the complex secrets contained within apparently banal objects and the environments that surround them. Covering entire walls or arranged in glass vitrines like artifacts of a vanished culture, the drawings ask for our attention and reflection. Their visual networks, through a proliferation of mark-making, unfurl into a broad articulation of gesture and disclosure.
Patrick Foran is an artist living in Buffalo, NY, where he teaches at UB and Niagara University.
