Hunt Gallery presents exhibitions of individual artists and/or groups of artists of regional, national and international renown whose works demonstrate significant aesthetic achievement and art historical importance.
An integral part of the educational mission of the Department of Art, Design and Art History (DADAH), the Gallery features curated exhibitions of contemporary art for the academic community and broader St. Louis area public.
Through sculpture, video and DIY craft-based processes, “Where nobody gets old, godly, and grave,” explores the function of fakery and fantasy in contemporary culture. Drawing from online culture, rave culture, history and fairy lore the artist investigates where fantasy meets reality, where illusion opens into insight, and where the digital and the mythic intertwine.
St. Louis-born, Chicago-based artist Chloë Simmons (BFA 2019) is a conceptual artist whose work involves various channels of information and interpretation of materials. She works in combinations of video, consumer products, print and fashion. Simmons received the MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; she has exhibited at Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, Georgia; Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; The Sheldon, St. Louis, Missouri; numerous group exhibitions; and solo shows in Milwaukee, Madison, Wisconsin, and Columbia, South Carolina.
Public Opening Reception: 6-8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 19
The Sanskrit word atra, meaning ‘here,’ refers literally to an actual place or specific location, while its negation, atra na, meaning ‘not here,’ suggests the dialogue inherent in the diasporic experience. This situation involves a segment of one’s identity being anchored to one location or heritage as something local yet equally rooted in a culturally and environmentally different locale. Cultures are not monadic, relying on a single place; instead, they consist of fragments that survive and manifest in multiple locations.
The ATRA exhibition examined some of the competing forces of tradition and modernity, indigence and diasporas, and the dualities mirrored in cultural hybridity. ATRA featured works by eight artists of South Asian heritage who live and work in the U.S. ATRA artists: Saumitra Chandratreya, Mee Jey, Shreepad Joglekar, Priya Kambli, Shreyas R. Krishnan, Renluka Maharaj, Al-Qawi Nanavati, Udita Upadhyana. The exhibition was curated by Jeffrey Hughes, Professor of Art History and Director of Hunt Gallery in the Department of Art, Design and Art History at Webster University.
Christina Shmigel is a contemporary Ukrainian-American artist working in sculptural installation and drawing. As a first-generation American growing up between cultures and languages, she became an observer of cultural cues. This habit of being informs her artistic practice; as she moves from place to place, she explores how a locality’s particular character manifests in its material culture. Combining hand-made objects with unaltered acquired components, employing shifts of scale and viewpoint, the theatrical spaces of her installations are experienced through slow revelation, in time and through memory. Shmigel’s sensibility as an artist is tuned towards making visible the wonder and poignancy lodged inside.
International artist Rebecca Olsen's new exhibition, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” visually addresses themes of infinity and asks existential questions about the nature of reality, the infinite nature of the universe, and perception. In her work, Rebecca Olsen creates symbols and uses geometric forms to translate myths and discuss what existence feels like. Through her creative lens, she contemplates significant scientific discoveries, psychology, the meaning of life, chaos theory, climate change, and the nature of power. At the heart of this exhibition is the desire to create an immersive space filled with ideas. She develops this visual language, creating a formal landscape for the ideas to dialog.
Born in Florence, Italy, to American artists, Olsen is president and co-founder of the Santa Reparata International School of Art (SRISA), one of Florence's most notable private art schools hosting students and faculty from all over the globe. Olsen's father, Dennis Olsen, who co-founded SRISA, was a native St. Louisan and an artist. As such, Rebecca Olsen still maintains close ties here. Rebecca Olsen has shown her work internationally, with gallery representation in Berlin, for her visual art, and she sells her wearable art at the Whitney Museum store.
This exhibition consisted of new paintings, photography, AI generations (with additional manipulation) and select films. Bolte utilizes recognizable (albeit absurdist) iconography and figures as tools to create a narrative that both reveals and contradicts itself as it is played out. Whether presenting a blatant reaction to our social environment or portraying a surreal disassociation, Bolte weaves themes that address humanity’s lack of critical thought, our human fallibilities expressed through miscommunication, lowered attention spans, celebrity idealization, dopamine spikes and dips, and modern-day superficial addictions — and then spits them all out through a post-pandemic paradigm, resulting in a sardonic and existential nightmare.
Peter Bolte is a St. Louis-based filmmaker and painter who has exhibited his work internationally. He has directed the feature films "All Roads Lead" and "Dandelion Man," several experimental and narrative short films and music videos. Other notable credits include being cinematographer on The Booksellers (Greenwich Entertainment), the Emmy nominated documentary Casting By (HBO Documentaries), as well as being invited to the Artist Academy as an emerging filmmaker during the 2013 New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.
Michael Paradise has taught Art at Roosevelt High School since the fall of 2000. He has taught Drawing, Design and Art Appreciation at St. Louis Community College, Forest Park and Wildwood, St. Charles Community College, and Southwestern Illinois College, Granite City. Paradise received a MFA in Painting, from Fontbonne College and a BFA in Painting from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. Paradise’s artistic investigations toward the Webster University Master of Arts has been primarily found object construction and modeling forms. Coming with a background of mostly painting, for Paradise, stuff is the new paint.
Sara Haag received her BA in Art Education with a K-12 Certification from Maryville University in 2002. She has been teaching art at Roosevelt High School since 2015.
This artwork is a meditative process that surprises the viewer with how it transforms media into the unexpected.
Politics of Exchange
Politics of Exchange
We are located at:
8342 Big Bend Blvd.
Webster Groves, MO 63119
Phone: 314-246-7171
Tuesday - Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
March 3, 2025
January 3, 2025
November 14, 2024