The String Room Art Gallery of Wells College is proud to announce an exhibition featuring award-winning artist Jozef Bajus. “Jozef Bajus: Recent Work” opens on November 3, 2017, and will remain open to the public until December 10. All are welcome to join the artist for a free reception on November 3, 2017 from 6 to 8 pm.
Jozef Bajus’s work is characterized by exquisitely-rendered structural interventions in found and cast-off materials such as books, tar paper, personal correspondence, and remnants of manufactured leather and felt. The resulting works range in scale, from small folded-paper sculptures to a suspended installation spanning one end of the Gallery’s main exhibition space. “Jozef Bajus: Recent Work” brings together selections from several bodies of work, all of which demonstrate the artist’s ability to derive extraordinary formal invention from the characteristics of the materials with which he works. His practice is the result of both a dedication to precise procedure and the discovery inherent in working with materials that may have otherwise been discarded.
Originally from Slovakia, Bajus received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, (AFAD), Bratislava, Slovakia, where he built a Fiber program later early in his teaching career, during the Velvet Revolution. He currently serves as the Coordinator of the Fibers/Design Program at SUNY Buffalo State College and has previously taught at a variety of institutions including Rhode Island School of Design, Slippery Rock University, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Split Rock, Kanazawa College of Art (Japan), and Jianxing University (China).
Bajus’s career has been nationally and internationally recognized in numerous awards, exhibitions and collections. He was the recipient of 1st Place, Triennial of Pattern, Budapest, Hungary; selected for Triennial of Tapestry, Muzeum Wlokienictva Lodz, Poland; The George Soros Fellowship Award; Residency at Rutgers University and the Judith Brodsky Center for Print and Paper, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Esprit de Corps Award, Burchfield Penney Art Center (BPAC), Buffalo, New York; Presidents Award for Excellence and Creativity, BSC, Buffalo; The Henkel Award, Bratislava, Slovakia and the Langley H. Kenzie Award, BPAC, Buffalo. His work has been featured in venues such as the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava; The City Gallery of Bratislava – Mirbach Palace, Bratislava; Trencin Art Gallery of M.A.B., Trencin, all in Slovakia; as well as the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo; the Gregg Museum of Art and Design in Raleigh, North Carolina; The Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin; Szombathely Art Museum in Szombathely, Hungary; and The Moravian Art & Craft Museum in Brno, Czech Republic. His artwork is also included in private collections in Europe, North America, Japan, and China.
The String Room Gallery is a center for the exhibition of contemporary art in the Finger Lakes region of New York. It is located on the Wells College campus in the southwest corner of the first floor of Main Building. The Gallery is open daily, and current hours may be found listed on the gallery’s website. For more information about the show at Wells, please see the gallery’s website at www.wells.edu/stringroomgallery or contact Professor Katie Waugh at 315.364.3237.
The above image is Jozef Bajus: “Metamorphosis #1 (Detail)” (2016), laser cut felt, mixed media. 7′ x 2′ diameter.
