Movement and Metaphor:
Art Exhibit to Open At Aurora University Thursday, Jan. 10

AURORA, Ill.-- "Movement and Metaphor,” an art exhibit by Dominic Moore of DeKalb and Karen Lange of Chicago, will be hosted by Aurora University from Thursday, Jan. 10, to Feb. 28.

The display is free to the public in the Downstairs Dunham Gallery in Dunham Hall at 1410 Marseillaise Place in Aurora.

The public is invited to a reception for the artists from 4:30 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 10, in the gallery.

The exhibit is part of AU’s 2007-2008 Celebrating Arts and Ideas series. Arts and Ideas Series sponsors are: MetLife and Nicor, Gold sponsors; Harris Aurora and Human Resource Management Systems, LLC, Silver sponsors; City of Aurora and Sikich, Bronze sponsors. Media support is provided by The Beacon News and Comcast.

Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays, and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays.

Moore is assistant director of the Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago. His pieces evoke landscapes and feature exaggerated brush strokes and sensitive pencil lines. He creates eight-by-10-in. canvases that are complex in composition with varied textures and  larger canvases that use tone-on-tone.

Moore said he invites viewers of his works to see their own visions in his paintings, to investigate a personal meaning or vision.

According to Moore, his works vacillate between the carefree and obsessive, emptiness and fullness, and pleasure and loneliness.

He earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from Western Illinois University and a master of fine arts candidate at Northern Illinois

University. Moore studied painting in Italy and drawing in Denver, Colo.

A St. Charles native, Lange is pursuing a master in fine arts degree in painting at Northern Illinois University. She earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa and a master’s in art education at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Lange said her visual language has developed from Marcel Duchamp with Dadaism to Jackson Pollock and expressionism to  Jessica Stockholder and post-modernism. She said, “I am interested in new definitions in art, specifically painting, and my work has no fixed ideology. I procure from painting, sculpture, inter-active and performance art in order to contribute my voice to the investigation of what is 21st-century art.”

Currently she creates three-dimensional paintings from wood, paper-mache, chicken wire, lights, plastic tubing, clay, plaster, ropes and ribbons.

Lange said, “The massiveness and grit of these bold, raw pieces force the audience to be confronted with the work, and conjure up questions about the validity of the art piece staring back at them. I find using multiple materials to create these assemblage paintings asserts itself a new sense of energy that I have not been able to achieve with a flat canvas.”

Lange said she feels compelled to entice her audience into the work of art. “Through visual intrigue, inter-active capabilities or a witness to a performance, the start of my design ponders the participants and how they will experience the work finishes it.”

According to Lange, producing art offers her another means of expressing thoughts, ideas, and themes that transcend verbal language. She hopes to continue to be a cultural worker through teaching, discussing, contemplating, debating and celebrating the arts.

Call (630) 844-7843 or visit www.aurora.edu/artsandideas for more information.

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