The Donna Beam Art Gallery presents Banana Strings, new work by Mike Calway-Fagen, October 7 to November 30

The artist’s reception will be October 27, 5-7 p.m. in the Donna Beam Gallery followed by his Visiting Artist lecture in the Barrick Museum Auditorium from 7-9 p.m.

Inspired by the spectacle of humanity in flux, Georgia-based artist Mike Calway-Fagen approaches sculpture as an open-ended plurality of associative possibilities, theoretical frameworks, and material arrangements. His work has appeared in the United Kingdom, Canada, and extensively across the United States. 

Artist’s Statement

“All the vital energies that have trouble sitting still, the mischievous rumblings, and the things that defy categorization are the shadowy figures and phenomena that lurk in difficult to define, interstitial spaces.  But, a lot of these things are us. Human beings aren’t certain about much in the world despite a foolhardy sense of knowing and attempts at interpretation, explication and comprehension. When the layers of the world are peeled back there’s no fruit behind them, just more layers, and endless strings.

“Each work in Banana Strings is part of a larger organism that questions interpretation and categorization as strategies for asserting control. Thresholds are active entities: thresholds between objects, within collage elements, in relationships between viewer and work. They ultimately become a transient space, a space of passing, a space not bracketed but fluid and emerging.”

Mike Calway-Fagen