Olin Art Gallery Exhibition Opens

The season at the Olin Art Gallery at Washington & Jefferson College’s Olin Fine Arts Center continues on Feb. 5 with the Opening Reception and Artist Talk welcoming the work of sculptor John Benvenuto and artist Dana Saulnier.

The exhibit runs through February 21 and is open daily from noon to 7 p.m. Working in diverse media, both artists work with the idea of scale and monumentality.

The essence of Benvenuto’s work is to create an “architecture, site-specific, that is seductive spatially in its shifting and destabilized boundaries,” he said. Working with polychrome mason’s line and salvaged architectural materials, Benvenuto creates rooms for the visitor to move into. These spaces become a means for the viewer to re-think or re-evaluate our assumptions of living space.

Saulnier said, “This work is history painting that negotiates our distance and disconnection from lost ‘spiritual’ frameworks.”

Working with the notions of history paintings, body sensation, and mapping of formal trajectories, Saulnier creates masterful, densely layered and lush canvases that invite the viewer to reconsider the shallow surfaces of our culture in favor of a paradigm of creativity.

Benvenuto received his master’s degree from the University of Iowa and his bachelor’s from University College of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y. Saulnier received a master’s degree from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.

For more information about Olin Fine Arts Center, call 724-223-6546.