Artist: Asya Dodina, Slava Polishchuk Title: What Remains Audio: Date: 2012 Dimensions: Triptych, each section, 37 inches x 37 inches Location in Library: First floor Media: Graphite on rice paper and canvas, debris Owner: The Brooklyn College Library Collection. Gift of the artists. Description: The artists’ choice of media is essential for this work, as they address the themes of loss, remembrance and survival, inherent in the devastation of New York’s Hurricane Sandy. Delicate images of battered plants are juxtaposed against the debris of painted, defunct magnetic tape, which originated in the 1930s for sound recording. This triptych raises awareness of challenges to libraries: in order to preserve content of a now obsolete technology, audiotape must be migrated to digital format. Related Websites – Interview with Asya Dodina & Slava Polishchuk, Studio International – Asya Dodina& Slava Polishchuk ” What Remains”, NY ART BEAT
Drawing
Artist: Chaim Gross (American, b. Austria, 1904-1991) Title: Dancing Girls Audio: Date: 1965 Dimensions: 43 1/2″ x 29″ Location in Library: Fourth floor Media: Charcoal on paper; works on paper Owner: The Brooklyn College Library Collection. Gift of the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation. © The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation Description: Gross was primarily known as a sculptor, but he was also a fine draftsman and watercolorist. Dancing Girls, one of his thousands of works on paper, demonstrates his mastery of drawing. In this charcoal sketch, he captures the vitality, three-dimensionality, and rhythmic energy of dancers in space. Along with acrobats and aerialists, dancers were among Gross’s favorite subjects. He said that he was attracted to these figures not because he was “interested in acrobats per se” but rather because he found in them “many possibilities of variations in forms and movements.” Related Website – The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation
