UM Faculty Exhibition

Lowe Art Museum. From Apr 12th through Jun 8th, 2008.

Lowe Art Museum. Miami Museums
Every year, the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami organizes what is called the UM Faculty Exhibition. These shows are a wonderful opportunity for the general public to get to see the work of UM’s faculty members, otherwise reserved for the intimacy of the university campuses. This year, the UM Faculty Exhibition is featuring photographic works by J. Tomás López, professor of art and art history at the University of Miami and Head of Electronic Media/4D, whose exhibition is titled The Metro Series.

For The Metro Series beginning in 1983, López took his camera underground, into the subways, to document urban transportation as both phenomena and theatre. Using six cities worldwide as his laboratory, New York, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Barcelona, and London, López created a curious study of subway commuters. The images, which capture everyday travelers, Wall Street yuppies, street performers, the homeless, and unemployed, demonstrate changes in fashion, attitudes toward security, and cultural rebellion. The collection, Le Métro, is also included in the Bibliothéque Nationale de France and was most recently added to the U.S. Library of Congress.

The exhibition at the Lowe presents work from the past two years in New York and Paris. Part of the exhibition employs the door of the subway car as a vertical bar to create a diptych that separates the travelers in the car from those outside. This juxtaposition within the picture plane creates a barrier that begs the audience to compare the two spaces. There is a tension that exists between the faces of the passive travelers inside and the concentration of those on the outside, who are either waiting to board or have already reached their destination. Another aspect is the view from the windows of the subway cars that shows the cityscape of New York and Paris as seen by the riders.

For more information, please call: 305.284.3535

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.