Published: October 17, 2023
B.A.S.K: Because Art Should Kill To Open in the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery
B.A.S.K.: Because Art Should Kill, an exhibition of work from artist Aleš Bask Hostomsky, opens Friday, Oct. 20, in the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery on The University of Tampa campus and will run through Dec. 15.
B.A.S.K.: Because Art Should Kill, an exhibition of work from artist Aleš Bask Hostomsky, opens Friday, Oct. 20, in the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery.
Known as BASK, the artist is best known around Tampa Bay for his graffiti and mural works. This monographic exhibition will showcase the iconomorphic style of his work with the largest collection of new BASK paintings, prints and installations ever shown.
BASK’s bricolage style takes the known and ubiquitous, the distressed and destroyed, and merges them to create windows through which visitors can explore layers of meaning and a multitude of questions — both originating from the piece and from the viewer’s approach to the piece. Each artwork engages an array of contexts and perspectives and leads visitors to consider what each image says about the culture and time in which it was created, as well as about the viewer and the viewer’s culture.
“This exhibition pushes known content and materials into places of unanchored interpretations,” said Jocelyn Boigenzahn, director of the College of Arts and Letters galleries. “Akin to dropping a pebble into a pond, we know some element of each iconic visual catalyst BASK employs in his works. But each time we look, we witness the hybrid context shift or morph the image, dropping the pebble again and creating different ripples of seemingly infinite and open-ended interpretations.”
A reception will be held on Oct. 20 from 6-9 p.m. at the gallery, located on campus at the Bailey Art Studios, 310 N. Boulevard. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Tuesday-Friday, and 1-4 p.m. on Saturday. There is no charge for admission.
This exhibition is made possible through the support of The University of Tampa Friends of the Gallery. For more information, please contact Boigenzahn via email at jboigenzahn@ut.edu or call (813) 253-6217.
