Oct 202023
 

Currently on view at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery 114 in Ybor City is Ya La’Ford’s solo exhibition HENGE- unearthing ancestral memory. The exhibition includes the sculptures seen above as well as several prints. The geometric work taps into universal themes of cross cultural connectivity through form.

From the gallery about the artist and the exhibition-

Ya La’ford (b. 1979, Bronx, NY) is an internationally recognized multimedia artist whose bold, geometric work explores themes of transformation and transcendence. Her solo exhibition HENGE – unearthing ancestral memory in Gallery114@HCC invites viewers to reconsider symbols from ancient civilizations as keys for navigating the shapes and patterns of modern life. Concepts such as connection, excavation, reverence and memory are woven together for an immersive and multi-sensory installation. Inspired by forms such as Neolithic henges, kivas, and other ancient architectural monuments, these new works by La’ford investigate ancestral messages and reimagines them for contemporary audiences.

The prints, seen above, strike an intriguing balance with their delicacy to the more solid forms of the sculptures.

About the prints from the gallery-

Many numbers have symbolic associations. For example, sets of three can sometimes indicate cycles of time, such as past, present, and future.

The prints included in HENGE are titled in a series as Seven שבע. In ancient near eastern and Israelite culture, the number seven can be used to communicate a sense of fullness or completeness (שבע “seven” is spelled with the same consonants as the word שבע “complete/full). The number seven can also be associated with intuition, wisdom, spiritual revelations, a growing self-awareness, or upcoming shifts that may have a positive impact on one’s life.

This exhibition is on view until 11/2?23.

Jun 212023
 

These days it’s hard not to think sometimes about the end of the world. But have you started putting together a plan? Thought about who would be good in a crisis? Put together a pros and cons list of your friends, family and acquaintances?  Wondered if things would actually be better?

Finn Schult’s current exhibition Everything You’ve Ever Wanted at Gallery 114 at Hillsborough Community College’s Ybor City location, presents an interesting take on the current state of things for those with the end on their minds.  It includes paintings, animal traps, an ipod and walkie talkie, as well as a book containing photos, prepper information, journal entries, drawings, and some pros and cons for the people in his life, including his mom. The paintings are titled “L’appel Du Vide” a French phrase meaning “the call of the void” or the urge to jump when you are standing in a high place.

From the gallery’s website-

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted is a solo exhibition of new work by Finn Schult (b. 1993, Naples, FL) reflecting on the inevitability of the end of the world and the fantasy of apocalypse as catalyst for utopia. Schult’s multimedia series exists as fragments, sketches and interludes distilled from an otherwise deranged web of theories. At times, the artworks presented in Gallery114@HCC feel terroristic, violent and unbearably bleak–at other times, they remind us of the beauty inherent in loss, longing and love. Schult’s work yearns for a world that doesn’t yet exist and mourns for a world that isn’t yet gone, answering the cry, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” with “The only way out is through.”

There is also a video in the exhibition, Where r u rn? which mixes a variety of imagery with a bit of author and mystic Terence McKenna’s 1999 final interview where he discusses “the fire in the madhouse at the end of time”- the possibility of the craziness in the world being a sign of the dying of our species.

This exhibition closes on 6/22/23.