Drawing from a well of pop culture references, including UFOs, the occult, secret societies, and ritual spaces, Cloud of Unknowing by Buffalo, NY artist Gary Sczerbaniewicz explores the tensions that arise when opposing beliefs about reality collide, intersect, or are uncomfortably juxtaposed. Presented through a series of interactive sculptures that use miniature dioramas meticulously crafted at a scale of 1 inch to 1 foot as their primary visual language, Sczerbaniewicz addresses the conflict between rationalist, materialist worldviews and their opposites—a clash he experienced repeatedly growing up in a suburban, Polish-American, Catholic household during the waning days of the Cold War. The show’s title, Cloud of Unknowing, refers to an anonymous 14th-century Christian mystical text that describes a method by which followers could understand the nature of God by setting aside knowledge and experience in favor of pure emotion. This idea of letting go of certainty in order to encounter another kind of truth mirrors the artist’s broader focus on competing, coexisting realities in our current cultural landscape–forces that shape, and at times, cloud our uniquely American identity.

Biography   Gary Sczerbaniewicz constructs metaphorical multimedia environments and installations, often involving performance elements and audience interaction. In an artist’s statement about his work, he writes:

“I employ architectural references to forgotten or overlooked spaces such as closets, attics, basements, crawlspaces, tunnels, etc., and various marginal forms of architecture such as 19th century mineshafts, fallout shelters, catacombs, etc. I often reference the effect that these compressed and insular zones have on our psyche, whether real or imagined. I am also conscious of the sense of the sublime that occurs when visually processing a dense vista, a long tunnel, a field of multiplied similar forms. As a result, I find rich inspiration in the conception of spaces designed to evoke these feelings. … I long to trigger in my viewers some distant sense of emotional familiarity, dream memory, historic association, or even night terror in the experiencing of my work.”

Gary Sczerbaniewicz received his BFA in Sculpture from the NYS College of Ceramics at Alfred University and his MFA from the Dept of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo. He was recipient of the Jacob Kassay MFA Award (2013), was a 2010 member of the NYFA Mark Program and has participated in a residency at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY (2013). He has recently completed a residency in Ithaca, NY through the Constance Staltonstall Foundation for the Arts, where much of the work for ‘Uknown Knowns’ was completed. In the past two years, Sczerbaniewicz has had solo exhibitions at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, De; The Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University, Lewiston, NY and Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. His work was most recently on view in the WNY area at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center as part of the series “Amid/In WNY.”