As you take your first step inside, light and color surround you. Your eyes open wide to take it all in.
These are but some of the feelings invoked by entering the new exhibit, “that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak (for Louise Glück)” by artist Charles Matson Lume, at the Jack Olson Gallery’s latest showing.
Open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, the gallery is set up with lots of open space. There are lights in prismatic shapes with black floors and white walls for contrast to make the shapes of the light more visible.
One image invokes the shape of a flower in bloom, another shows circles of light within a square.
Lume is an artist and visual creator whose works use themes of light and life inspired by poets and poetry.
“It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there,” Lume said on his artist website.
Lume has a master’s of fine arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has held exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Kemijärvi Art Gallery and Hunter College in New York.
Much of Lume’s work focuses on the use of light and how people fit into the world.
“My art engages in this conversation via light, quotidian materials, and architecture. Through the ephemeral and quick-silver properties of light, I think we can begin to know ourselves more,” said Lume via his website. “Thus, knowing how we fit into contexts, histories, ways of being.”
Lume’s work lends itself to have us question our place in the world and how we fit into the grand scheme of the universe.
The exhibit will be on display until Oct. 24 and will be followed by the annual High School Invitational which will open Nov. 4.
