Assistant Professor Nicola López in Two Exhibitions this Spring

By
Brittany Nguyen
April 05, 2021

Visual Arts Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Nicola López (CC ’98) is featured in John Thompson: An Artist Collects at Childs Gallery and also in When Evening Has Passed and Tomorrow Comes at the Kimball Art Center’s new space, The Yard. 

John Thompson: An Artist Collects explores the fascinating connection between an artist’s practice and the artwork they choose to collect. This exhibition showcases the private art collection of artist John Thompson alongside examples of his own work and works by eight other artists exhibited with his own creative output. 

López presents The Apparition, woodcut and silkscreen on white BFK Rives Paper with lithograph and woodblock printed on Mylar and Collaged. The piece is up for sale on Childs Gallery website. 

The exhibition is currently open to the public Tuesday through Sunday by appointment only from March 11 through May 5, 2021. 

López is also featured in When Evening Has Passed and Tomorrow Comes. The exhibition features four internationally renowned artists, including López, as they propose bold imaginings of the future. They all take inspiration from science fiction, blending the fantastical with the everyday and ushering us into alternate, often utopian worlds. 

Nicola López in John Thompson: An Artist Collects, image courtesy Childs Gallery.

Their visions, like all utopias, are “historically situated and culturally inflected, and often redress the injustices of our past and present while imagining a more ideal existence. Some of the artists offer complex considerations of race and gender, for example, exposing the biases of outmoded narratives. They use satire to invert the familiar, critiquing its logic. They invent hybrid forms, offering access to new identities and epistemological realms to move beyond the perceived limits of humanity. In proposing new modes of seeing, being, and doing, they powerfully build bridges towards luminous possible futures,” according to the KimBall Art Center. 

The exhibition is open from March 23 through June 13, 2021. Entry tickets are free for timed entrance. The exhibition is accompanied by a robust schedule of public programming, including art talks, panel discussions, book discussions, and more.