Works by art professors Andrew Leventis and Thomas Schmidt will be included in a new exhibition opening September 20 at the Mint Museum of Art uptown location. The show, Mainframe, is the Young Affiliates of the Mint's Third Annual Juried Art Show. It explores the role of technology in society and how technology overstimulation has impacted the world’s youngest generations.
Leventis, assistant professor of painting, references imagery from film and television in his work, often recreating stills from movies in an almost photorealist style. He has submitted Girl Watching Cartoons, an oil painting on linen from 2015 that depicts a young girl watching cartoons on an old television.
Schmidt is assistant professor of Interdisciplinary 3D Studio and Digital Fabrication. Before coming to UNC Charlotte, he was a professor of ceramic design at the Alfred/CAFA Ceramic Design for Industry program at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. While there he co-founded the design team Recycled China, using industrial waste within China to create architectural tile and sculptural objects. Data Mine Table (2014), his work for Mainframe, is an assemblage of digitally fabricated models, Qing Dynasty ceramic shards, kiln-wall scrap, recycled aluminum with coal, plaster, dyed feathers, and refractory ceramics.
The opening of Mainframe on September 20 is part of the grand re-opening of the Mint Museum Uptown and will be in the museum's Level Five Expansion Space.