FROM DUMPSTER TO DIVINITY: AESCHLIMAN IN CANADAY GALLERY

Classical ideals of the eternal and the divine collide with throwaway modernity in the art of Mark J. Aeschliman, to be shown in the gallery at Canaday Library in an exhibition titled Simulacrum from Monday, Oct. 25, to Tuesday, Dec. 14. Aeschliman plans to give a gallery talk at a reception that will open the exhibition on Oct. 25 at 4:30 p.m. The show is free and open to the public.

In Simulacrum, discarded packing crates are the support for photographic images of classical sculptures representing deified Roman emperors. Aeschliman retrieved the crates, emptied of their contents and bound for the incinerator, from dumpsters. In reconstituting them as works of art through the photographic process, with its "alchemy of silver and bromides," Aeschliman "evokes the transmutation of matter as a metaphor for self-realization," he says.

Simulacrum's shadowy images of classical figures conjure up a lost world of transcendent beauty. The faces of classical sculpture, Aeschliman says, "occupy some position that is otherwise vacant." According to Aeschliman, his juxtaposition of these images with the detritus of consumer culture is intended to probe our values, asking where divinity can reside in our world and how it can be discerned.

Aeschliman, a native of New Hampshire, lives and works in Switzerland. He holds advanced degrees in both Italian and art history, and teaches art and art history at the American School in Switzerland. His work has been exhibited in Switzerland, Italy, Germany and the United States.

Simulacrum will be open will be open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 1 - 5 p.m.

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