​The Clifford Gallery is currently exhibiting “Holes,” a collection of artworks that accentuate and elaborate on the themes of the most recent publication of the artistic journal Effects. The exhibit is meant to draw attention to the periphery and the edge of the visible. They are meant to call upon feelings of the unknown, but also the familiar; it is an exercise in opposing forces that ultimately challenge viewers to reflect—both on themselves, and the world.

​Featured in this exhibit are 15 works that each represent at least one theme of “Holes.” The gallery’s current list of works was produced by 15 contributing artists, two of which (Noel Anderson and Christopher Page) visited Colgate University earlier in the month to talk about their work and the exhibit. On Oct. 22, two more contributing artists, Jeffrey Stuker and Patricia Treib, visited Colgate to divulge upon their respective methods and philosophies relating to their art, as well as some of the meaning and intent behind their work in the current exhibit.

​Jeffrey Stuker’s work focuses on creating highly realistic computer-generated images that are meant to highlight a broader historical, scientific or industrial reference. Based out of Los Angeles, Stuker also creates rendered films that examine similar themes, such as the relationship between the artificial and the organic.

​Stuker presented many of these themes in his talk which mainly centered around the eccentric insect, the fulgora. This insect is famous for its peanut-shaped head and reptilian-eye pattern on the back of its wings. All of these attributes developed in the fulgora as a mimicry of dangerous predators such as snakes, alligators and larger lizards. This unique creature was found by scientists in South America and served as a shared point of interest for several artists from the 20th century to the present.

Stuker was inspired by and curious about the ironies and “self-defeating armament” of the fulgora’s mimicry.

“With so many different defense mimetic strategies [assuming] so many different forms of aesthetic display, this creature pretends to be anything other than what it is — a bug,” Stuker said. “One of the things which occurred to me as quite funny is that, somehow, this poor insect, which must have been hunted by so many different predators, engaged in so many acts of mimicry that it was no longer able to function at a biological level. This felt really funny and strange, and yet, at the same time, true.”

​This somewhat sorrowful reflection on the bug, and the description he read of it in a text by Rogé Kaiwa, “Damask,” inspired Stuker to render his own image of the insect, which he intended to serve as a supplement to the text. This endeavor would lead to more interest in graphic design and serve as a turning point for his career.

After making an animated short film about the fulgora, Stuker continued pursuing his interest in 3D models and combined it with his interest in Greek mythology, resulting in his work displayed in the Clifford Gallery. The kallima inachus is a highly mimetic butterfly which camouflages into its surroundings, hiding the sense of life, similar to when Io is transformed into a cow in Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.” Stuker elaborated on the butterfly by rendering a 3D habitat into which the butterfly all but disappears. He partnered with Nour Mobarak to put spores into the work’s case, which would over time eat away and corrode the image.

​Contrasting sharply with the methods and style of Stuker, Patricia Treib focuses her artistic attention on “absences and shifts in perspective.” She achieves this through deep and elaborate motifs which manifest themselves in colorful, broad-stroked paintings. Treib’s work frequently focuses on common items and turns them into larger, grander abstractions.

​Treib’s father was a clock repairman and kept several clocks throughout their home. Treib found artistic potential and inspiration in the clocks.

​Treib’s entry into the Holes exhibit, “Antiparian,” is a painting which combines the abstraction of her 35 mm camera, an opening between a torso and an arm from a 16th century Greek painting, a pendulum clock and a 1940s Vogue sewing pattern envelope. These parts are all enveloped in a brown two-dimensional space. Treib’s work continues her interest in taking simple pictures or patterns and recreating them in an abstract form. She often revisits her works multiple times throughout an extended period.

​“There’s a lot of putting something down and then wiping it away, and then putting something down and then wiping it away, and then putting it down again and then wiping it away again,” Treib said. “I more and more often think about [my works] as carving things out. I wipe it away because I want almost every area to feel a bit like a portal. It could be a portal through, but then at other times, it feels like it’s ejecting forward.”

Associate Professor of Art and Film and Media Studies Lakshmi Luthra commented on the contrasting processes of the artists.

​“Despite having, you know, quite different processes, I think both of them deal with absence in between moments—the layering together the organic and the inorganic, the past and present. A kind of dilation of time happens in the work,” Luthra said.

​The diversity in style and unity in theme and mediation in the “Holes” exhibit demands deep thought and reflection from those who visit. Stuker and Tribe exemplify this reflection as they both work towards expanding what art can express.