Two new exhibitions curated by Bentley Brown (NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts), will be held in the Art Gallery at Brooklyn College from March 4 through April 1. “Saturation: Beauty in the Everyday” by Deborah Willis will be in the Main Gallery and “Sonic Saturation” by Mason Webb, featuring sound by Gwai Mak, will be in Gallery B. “Saturation, Beauty in the Everyday” features a career survey of works by pioneering photographer, historian, and MacArthur Fellow Deborah Willis. This exhibition contextualizes her art within the concept of saturation, using this idea as an aesthetic and conceptual tool to address themes of the politics of visibility at the center of her practice. In Willis’ photographs, saturation reveals the depth of feeling lying at the heart of creative and lived experience. Informed by personal, cultural, and historical influences—from her closet to the Civil War—and including fashion as a practice of freedom and aspiration for the Black community, Willis focuses on sites of emotional and aesthetic intimacy that actively engage expressions of beauty in the everyday. Deborah Willis, “Faith Bartley,” 2020, 20 x 24 inches. Deborah Willis, “Carrie at Euro Salon,” Eatonville, Florida, 2004. Mason Webb, “Untitled (no. 4)”, Galvanized steel, paper, rope, bricks, and fluorescent lighting, 2020, 58 x 40 x 14 inches. Mason Webb is a multidisciplinary artist who brings together material practices of sculptural metalwork, fabric and traditional painting, and vibrant wax-sculptural form. He cultivates sites of sonic mapping inspired by his formative years spent in Atlanta’s hip-hop and house music scenes. In his work, Webb synthesizes visual art, fashion, and music to create immersive venues of total experience, or gestalt. “Sonic Saturation” is part of a series of extensive collaborations with Atlanta- and Los Angeles–based musician and sound artist Gwai Mak, foregrounding cross-media collaboration as a means of community-building and aesthetic exploration. The Art Gallery at Brooklyn College officially opened Fall 2024 with a faculty exhibition called “Urban Contours.” The gallery’s hours are Tuesdays–Thursdays, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Fridays, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
