[Imc-newsroom] press release

[Benjamin Grosser]

Additional information, and images of the some of the paintings referred
to in the following release are available at:

   http://www.itg.uiuc.edu/people/grosser/

thanks!

ben


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                                  PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Benjamin Grosser				For Immediate Release
         217-384-5289
         grosser at uiuc.edu

    Local Composer and Artist to Exhibit New Paintings in Downtown Urbana
	
Artist Benjamin Grosser will be exhibiting paintings at Sandwich Boy, 
212 W. Main St. in downtown Urbana, from March 10 through April 6.  
This event marks the first time Mr. Grosser, a well-known local composer, 
has publicly exhibited his visual art.  An opening reception will be held 
at Sandwich Boy from 6 to 8:30 p.m., on Saturday, March 24.  The public 
is invited.  

Grosser's works are abstract in content, and his primary medium is oil 
on canvas.  Composer, writer, and colleague Rick Burkhardt states:

   The colors and shapes in Benjamin Grosser's paintings haunt each other, 
   provoke and defy each other: red reinvents blue, and circles convince 
   you they are squares.  Rude clarities turn mysterious.  Even light has 
   its own intelligence, spilling selectively over the players from 
   unthinkable sources.  Tiny specks infest large slabs--or is it the 
   other way around?  When I look at these paintings I change my mind 
   ten times.  Are there two circles or three hundred?  Are there any 
   circles?  What color are they?  Certainties and mysteries go hand in 
   hand, and everything glows, often in secret.  From within those secrets 
   these paintings reward long looks.

Grosser grew up in Champaign-Urbana.  He received bachelor's and master's 
degrees in music composition from the University of Illinois, where he 
studied with Salvatore Martirano and Zack Browning.  Grosser has been 
active as a composer of both acoustic and computer-generated music, and 
has produced numerous concerts over the last decade. 

In addition to local performances through the U of I School of Music, 
Grosser has had many performances around the world--most recently at the 
ThreeTwo New Music Festival, held in New York City last October.  

Grosser's music has been called "very loud and ugly" by the St. Louis 
Riverfront Times, and he has been referred to as "an accomplished painter 
of large canvases" by Art Calendar Magazine.

Grosser is manager of the Visualization, Media and Imaging Laboratory at 
the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University 
of Illinois.


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Editor's Note:

Members of the media are invited to preview artwork to be included in the 
show, and to interview the artist by contacting him directly.  High-quality 
slides and/or scans of the artwork are available.