Campus Connection

Art Professor Linda Levinson to exhibit in the Wisconsin ‘Triennial 2016’

The artwork of UW-La Crosse faculty member has been selected for a state exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA). Six photographs from Associate Professor, Linda Levinson’s photographic series “Hidden Souls of Book” will be shown in the Wisconsin “Triennial 2016” exhibition from Sept. 24-Jan. 8, 2017. The jury process for the exhibition involved artwork submitted by more than 600 artists, followed by visits to more than 95 artists’ studios across the state. MMoCA’s curatorial team selected works of 34 individual artists. The Triennial captures “the richness and variety of artistic expression across the state, and showcases significant themes being addressed within the contemporary art world.” [caption id="attachment_46840" align="alignleft" width="214"] UWL Art Professor Linda Levinson, No. 15: Sanskrit-English Dictionary Sir M. Monier-Williams New Edition Oxford, from the series "The Hidden Souls of Books," 2015.[/caption] Levinson’s new work, “Hidden Souls of Books,” is a series of photograms — cameraless images — made on either cyanotype or silver-gelatin photographic paper. Levinson placed a series of classical and contemporary texts on the surface of photosensitive paper and exposed them to light creating ghost-like trace in white that, she says, evokes the mysterious essence of the book itself. In the Judaic tradition, books are said to have souls, explains Levinson. They retain not only the vestiges of those who wrote them, printed them, and bound them, but even those who have read individual copies of a book, she says. “I wanted to see what these books would give me if I had not read them,” says Levinson. “If I just held them and engaged with each one in this 'one-on-one performance' of making the photogram. I needed to see if the book, or any trace left from someone who had touched it or read it, could reveal something to me; and, if that were the case, how this could be seen only through this process of making the photographs.” Conventional photography posits an equation between the pattern of chemicals on a treated paper and the material existence of objects, people and places, explains Levinson. These photographs are supposed "to look like" their subjects even when they demonstrably reveal more beauty, horror, or wonder than the casual naked eye might see. [caption id="attachment_46842" align="alignright" width="228"] UWL Art Professor Linda Levinson, No. 18: The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World, from the series "The Hidden Souls of Books," 2016.[/caption] “Yet there are myriad other dimensions to the interactions between photosensitive papers and the materials used to block, refract, or reflect the light poured upon them,” says Levinson. She says her images evoke and probe those dimensions, not to 'express' what she sees or thinks — but to discover what she does not know. Get museum hours and more at: http://www.mmoca.org/exhibitions/exhibits/wisconsin-triennial-2016.