An exhibition of works by University of Alabama at Birmingham Associate Professor of Art Derek Cracco, MFA, will be on show at beta pictoris gallery Nov. 1-Dec. 13.
Derek Cracco, "Staring at the Sun"The exhibition, “Blinded,” is a series of new paintings by Cracco that focus on the ephemera of light. A free opening reception is planned 6-9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, at the gallery, 2411 Second Ave., North. Visit the gallery online at www.MausContemporary.com or call 205-413-2999.
“I am intrigued by those moments when we see only a single color of light,” Cracco said to beta pictoris owner and director Guido Maus in the exhibition announcement. “Blinded” explores these moments through searing images of fireworks, explosions and other flashes of light.
“In a nod to the French Post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat, who devised a painting method that consisted of creating an image from thousands of colored dots, Cracco constructs a series of intimate, detailed pointillist-style paintings,” Maus wrote in the beta pictoris announcement. “Over as many as seven separate layers separated by barrier coats, he turns his focus on repetition and attention to detail into fields of flashes, stars and light. Cracco’s influences range from astronomy to particle physics to music, shifting and oscillating between the macro and the micro, between the illusions of light in works like ‘Sunrise’ and the disruptions the images dissolve into when viewed at close range.”
Cracco teaches printmaking and computer graphics and is associate chair of the UAB Department of Art and Art History.