November Issue 2001
UNC Charlotte Features Works by Roy Strassberg in Rowe Arts Gallery
Sculptor Roy Strassberg's work Holocaust Bone Structures
will be on exhibition at the Rowe Arts Main Gallery in the Rowe
Arts Building on the Campus of the University of North Carolina
Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, from Nov. 8 through Dec. 7. All are
invited to view the work and meet the artist.
Strassberg is the new Chair of the Department of Art at UNC Charlotte. Strassberg grew up in the metropolitan New York area. He comes to UNC Charlotte from Minnesota State University, Mankato where he was Chair of the Department of Art, a practicing artist, and a ceramics faculty member for 25 years,
"Strassberg's bone-like structures are simultaneously chilling, horrifying, and hauntingly beautiful, says Steven Feinstein, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. Strassberg's clay assemblages have been "molded, glazed, etched with black, and fired in a way that suggests the delicacy of Eskimo bone carvings," adds Feinstein. Stark yet poetic, these complex works can be interpreted from many perspectives.
According to Strassberg, "these works functioned as a resource for me to reconnect to a cultural heritage from which I felt physically disconnected." Strassberg considers his artistic process to be as much a part of the content of these works as the historical events of the Holocaust. As a sculptor, he takes artistic liberty to transform the events into art.
He also feels a sense of responsibility to use his art to practice tikkum olam - Hebrew for "mend the world." "Strassberg is unabashed in his approach to the Holocaust," says Feinstein. He continues, Maus Haus ("Mouse House") is a tribute to cartoonist Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Maus: A Survivor's Tale, in which Jews are depicted as mice. Untermenschen ("Subhumans") refers to the Nazi assault on both people and language, where normal words and phrases assumed sinister new meanings as euphemisms for destruction."
This exhibition of ceramic sculptures reflects upon the monumental savagery and mechanisms of ethnic cleansing, and "poses questions about faith, particularly so-called post-Holocaust Jewish theology and connections to Christianity," suggests Feinstein.
For more information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings or call the gallery at 704/687-3315.
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