February 22, 2006

Contact: Alka Gupta, (718) 488-1015

Art by Steven Gwon and Mineko Maruyama is on Display
at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus in March

Brooklyn, N.Y.—Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus will present works by two artists of Asian heritage - Steven Gwon’s “Year-Circular” and Mineko Maruyama’s “Obscure” – in March.

The exhibition will take place from March 1 to March 31 in the Campus’s Salena Gallery. An opening reception will occur on Thursday, March 2, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Gwon’s “Year-Circular” is a series of drawings in colored pencil on graph paper. According to the artist, each day of the year is recorded through a “conceptual process that incorporates numbers that are used to measure time and space, the color progression of the spectrum, research from the New York Times, and hand-drawn lines on paper.”

 Gwon first exhibited abstract black-and-white drawings in 1973. Over the next 10 years, his work was included in shows at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the New Museum and P.S. 1.  After a nearly two-decade hiatus, he resumed making art and exhibited new work at Gallery 128 in New York in 2003, at Pace University in Pleasantville in 2004, and at the Hunterdon Museum of Art, Asian American Art Centre and DUMBO Art Center in 2005.

Mineko Maruyama creates abstract paintings with Sumi ink, silver leaf and mud pigments. The theme of her work is Zen, which she began to study in New York while working as an Asian painting conservator. “I came to recognize the fact that I belong to Japanese culture and traditions which I had been neglecting…Living in the melting pot urges me to express myself through art that associates with the Orient and I would like to integrate the two cultures,” she says.

Maruyama graduated from Musashino Art University in Japan, and also studied at the Manhattan Graphic Center. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Japan and New York. She has also exhibited in Korea and at the 14th Lantern of the East International Art Festival in Bangkok, Thailand.

For information, call Gallery Director Nancy Grove at (718) 488-1198.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. More than 28,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s residential and regional campuses, including more than 13,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.