The works of Georgia artist Melissa Huang will be on display at Brenau University’s Leo Castelli Gallery starting Jan. 11.
Huang will speak during the opening reception from 5:30-7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 11, in the Redwine Lobby just outside of the gallery in the John S. Burd Performing Arts Center on the historic Gainesville campus.
The solo exhibit features paintings and video self-portraiture.
“Huang studies the desire and dissonance associated with portraying a specific or idealized image for a mostly digital audience,” Brenau Gallery Director Gena Brodie Robbins said. “Huang’s works explore her desire to maintain a perfect persona and fulfill the roles society places on women, and the challenges she faced along the way.”
Huang’s paintings and video works explore the polarity between her true self and an idealized image, inspired by technological glitches.
“In recent work, I consider how those of us coming of age with the internet and social media have constructed alternative identities online—fantasies, really—that bear little resemblance to the person IRL,” Huang said in her artist’s statement.
“I transform my image beyond believable authenticity: it is fragmented, replicated, and distorted to the point of becoming disconnected from my real body. Ultimately, I use this series of works to dismantle the complicated archetypes to which women must conform in our ever-changing cyber landscape.”
Huang lives in Statesboro, Georgia, and is an assistant professor of art at Georgia Southern University. She graduated from the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State with her Master of Fine Arts in drawing and painting in 2021, and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in fine arts studio from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2014.
She has exhibited nationally and abroad with recent solo exhibitions at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, the Albany Museum of Art, and Whitespace in Atlanta. Huang has a background working in galleries, museums, archives and art appraisal. More about Huang and her art can be found on her website.
Huang’s solo exhibition will be on display until March 19.
