The exhibit “A Theory of Everything: Paintings by Jay Constantine” opens in the Muskegon Community College Overbrook Gallery on Monday, Sept. 23, and continues until Friday, Oct. 25.
Gallery admission is free. Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday, with special weekend and evening hours during MCC’s production of “Tartuffe” on Oct. 16-20 in the adjacent Overbrook Theater. On Oct. 10, a free public reception will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. with a gallery talk by the artist beginning at at 6:30 p.m. Call the Arts and Humanities Department at (231) 777-0324 for more information.
The exhibit is being held in conjunction with the annual ah Fest, whose theme this year is “Faith and Reason.”
Constantine sums up contemporary life in a decidedly postmodern manner in his series of oil and wax paintings collectively titled “A Theory of Everything,” in which dichotomies abound. He touches on physics and metaphysics, religion and cosmology, all the while borrowing painting techniques, ranging from textbook scientific illustrations to the Old Masters of the Renaissance. The result bridges the chasm between faith and reason.
In Constantine’s pictorial world, microcosms and macrocosms co-exist; objects both profound and mundane cohabitate. “Everything,” as the exhibit title suggests, is envisioned on equal terms. The swirling jumble of seemingly unrelated objects appear on circular panels recalling the Renaissance tradition of “tondo” painting along with both microscope and telescope lenses.