Protégée of Salvador Dalí to Exhibit at Staniar Gallery
Washington and Lee’s Staniar Gallery is pleased to present “Strange Attractors,” an exhibit of recent work by Surrealist-style artist Louis Markoya. The show will be on view February 16 – March 20.
Markoya will give a public artist’s talk on March 4 at 5:30pm in Wilson Hall’s Concert Hall. The lecture will be followed by a reception for the artist.
This exhibition marks the first solo exhibition in forty years for Louis Markoya who worked as a studio assistant in the early 1970s for legendary Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. The experience had a profound effect and continues to influence his work, which he sees as an extension of Dalí’s vision.
“I feel I have some unique opportunities in that I have known Dalí and his love of science/technology well and can utilize some of these advances in artworks Dalí may have done if he had the opportunity,” said Markoya.
Drawing on his background in fractals and mathematics, Markoya begins his paintings digitally, working on the computer to visualize his ideas, which he then transfers to canvas where he often works in oil.
For the show in Staniar Gallery, Markoya has also created Surrealist inspired sculptures and lenticular prints, a process that gives the illusion of depth as the image is viewed from different angles.
The exhibition will include original Dalí works from Markoya’s collection as well as a 3-D animated video created at Washington and Lee’s Integrative and Quantitative (IQ) Center. The IQ Center, located in the Telford Science Library, is home to sophisticated imaging and computational equipment and serves as a state-of-the-art teaching and learning space that fosters interdisciplinary research. The artist describes the video as a “3D journey inside the brain to witness the geometry of the thought process.”
Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call 540-458-8861.
