GAMBIER, OHIO, September 12, 2017 – Two Gund Gallery fall/winter exhibitions are announced. Urban Cadence: Street Scenes from Lagos and Johannesburg and _Robert Rauschenberg: Rookery Mounds_ open Friday, October 13, 2017 at 5:00 PM.

Urban Cadence
October 13, 2017-March 4, 2018

Urban Cadence tells the multifaceted stories of two urban environments - Lagos, Nigeria and Johannesburg, South Africa - experienced through the artistic expressions of over sixty photographs and videos by nine award-winning and internationally recognized contemporary African artists. African cities are the fastest growing in the world, and these two cities have experienced this growth in diverse yet fascinating ways: the first as a mega-city, the latter as a center of industrial development. The street scenes in this exhibition represent the complex narratives of these urban sites: tales of migration, labor, desperation, success, hope, and imagination among others. Here, these stories are woven together through the metaphor of cadence, which speaks to the rhythms of life. Cadence is the gait of the artist and inhabitants of the city as they move through urban spaces. It is a visual rhythm an artist creates when telling the city’s myriad stories. At the same time, it is a musical metaphor that artists draw on to speak about their images or their photographic practice. Whether sobering, humorous, or unexpected, the visuals of Urban Cadence challenge us to explore what it means to be urban in Africa in the early 21st century. Artists include: Akinbode Akinbiyi, Akintunde Akinleye, Kelechi Amadi-Obi, Jude Anogwih, Jodi Bieber, Donna Kukama, Sabelo Mlangeni, Uche Okpa-Iroha, and Jo Ractliffe.

Urban Cadence is guest curated by Carol Magee, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. _Urban Cadenc_e was initiated by TECAA (Touring Exhibitions of Contemporary Artists of Africa) and made possible through the advocacy, generosity and leadership of TECAA’s Principals Diane Frankel and Cynthia Plevin. The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College is shepherding the project’s completion, tour and a forthcoming book. Gund Gallery exhibitions and programs are sponsored, in part, by the Gund Gallery Board of Directors, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

An opening reception will take place on October 13 from 5:00-8:00 PM after a talk by guest curator Carol Magee and artist Uche Okpa-Iroha at 4:10 PM. Urban Cadence will be on view in the Gund Gallery’s Buchwald-Wright Gallery from October 13, 2017 to March 4, 2018.

Robert Rauschenberg: Rookery Mounds
October 13, 2017-January 7, 2018

In 1979, Robert Rauschenberg produced a series of eleven lithographs using a selection of the thousands of photographs he took near his Captiva Island, Florida residence and studio, marking the artist’s rediscovery of photography. “I became addicted to photography again…The camera heightened my desire to look,” proclaimed the artist. Mundane and familiar images of water and boats, plants, wheels and tires, and draped fabrics gently overlap and weave together in muted violets, browns, grays, pinks and oranges. The images in the Rookery Mounds series were used as the projected backdrop for collaborator and choreographer Trisha Brown’s _Glacial Decoy_ (1979), the first of many formal collaborations between the artist and choreographer, and would appear in many of Rauschenberg’s paintings throughout the 1980s. These historically important new acquisitions to the Gund Gallery Collection were recently made possible through the generosity of Ann and Graham Gund ’63.

An opening reception will take place on October 13 from 5:00-8:00 PM and the works will remain on view in the Gund Gallery’s Buchwald-Wright Gallery from October 13, 2017 to January 7, 2018.