OSU Museum of Art showcases faculty member in Angie Piehl: Feral Beauty and Opulent Decay

Thursday, November 5, 2015

The Oklahoma State University Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of Angie Piehl: Feral Beauty and Opulent Decay, featuring the work of an OSU faculty member. 

In this exhibition, artist and associate professor Angela Piehl invites us to explore the topics of luxury, accumulation, and alienation from nature from a gendered perspective through a collection of her paintings and drawings. 

Using a wide range of sources, Piehl employs images and photographs of both designed and natural beauty as a starting point for abstracting and re-combining elaborately decorative, even at times grotesque, elements. References to organic materials such as flesh, hair, tentacles, eggs, fat, bone, muscle, crystalline structures, and wood appear alongside her choices of color, pattern, and textural artifice to produce what Piehl calls "feral bouquets.” 

The abstracted paintings and drawings result in a layered visual texture that invites the viewer to look more closely. At once engaging and seductive, while also repellent and abject, these biomorphic abstractions address multiple layers of the human condition through their allegorical and narrative allusions.  

The exhibition is on view from Nov. 9, 2015 – March 12, 2016. There will be an opening reception on Nov. 19 from 5 to 8 pm. The exhibition is organized by the OSU Museum of Art and curated by Mary Mikel Stump, Director/Curator, The University Galleries at Texas State University, Austin.