Apperceptions: Recent Work by Allen C. Topolski

Aug. 19 – Sept. 25, 2005 

Organized by Samek Art Gallery

Aug. 26
5:00 p.m. in the Gallery Theatre: Lecture by the artist. Reception to follow.

Curators' statement and acknowledgements.
As this brochure goes to press, Allen Topolski has just completed transforming the Samek Art Gallery by painting several walls colors that are dated somehow, adding wood paneling, projecting a passage of wallpaper from another era-and positioning many extraordinary sculptures in the space. Apperceptions: Recent Work by Allen C. Topolski is both a site-specific installation and an exhibition of discrete objects. That this exhibition is not one or the other but both and the ambiguity of in between is key to understanding his work.

As the viewer enters the gallery and encounters Topolski's work, a layered dialogue unfolds full of ideas and associations, set against a background of memory. In his object transformations, past and present seem engaged in an endless tempo of references and reciprocity. Topolski's sculptures are a paradox. They seem oddly familiar yet it seems as if we have never seen them before. The objects are essentially discards of our everyday world that Topolski has retrieved and reinvented. The mundane detritus of mass production and serial manufacture has been recreated as whimsical visual poetry evoking an endless chain of associations, personal histories, memories, and fantasies. Underscoring this use of mass-produced domestic objects is the artist's commitment to craft and the hand of the individual in giving the work potency and meaning. Allen Topolski creates an imaginative world where he not only continually transforms objects, but also reshapes our experiences and perceptions of the world around us. He asks us to enter into our own imaginative processes where all familiar things have the potential to take on new meaning. Much as in a dream, we are able to encounter a new reality where we have to suspend judgment and expectation of ordinary objects and meanings and accept that anything is possible.

Apperception is a homecoming for Allen Topolski '86. In addition to earning his BA at Bucknell, Allen was gallery attendant in the galleries (1984-1986; was Graduate Assistant 1986 and was born and raised in ShamokIn, PA just 60 miles west of Lewisburg.

We would like to acknowledge the following people for their work on this project. Thank you to Cyril Reade, for his fine and informative essay; Jeffrey Brunner and Nancy Cleaver for their assistance with many facets of this exhibition; and Adrienne Beaver for brochure design. Last but foremost, a special thank you to Allen Topolski for transforming the gallery during several trips to Bucknell this summer, and for sharing his work with the Bucknell community and region. D.M. and C.P.

Cyril Reade essay