Bits and Pieces
Image courtesy of artist William PK Carter

Gallery 40 in the Hallway Art Space in Poughkeepsie is showing a new exhibition, Bits and Pieces, from July 1 through July 26. The exhibition puts a spotlight on collage as a medium and is presented in connection with the symposium “Making Meaning,” planned for July 22–24 at Vassar College.

The exhibition is a juried group show with William PK Carter as the featured artist and focuses mainly on young and emerging artists. Collage is an art form in which individual elements—pieces of paper, fabric, photographs, found paper, and the like—are assembled into new, autonomous artworks. Both collage and assemblage fundamentally depend on bringing together two or more existing elements in a way that makes us consider them in new ways, both as individual items and as a new whole. Instead of creating everything from scratch, the artist selects and combines existing elements, often layering them to produce new meanings or visual effects.

The term comes from the French word coller, meaning “to glue,” and it became widely recognized in the early 20th century through artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They introduced collage into Cubism by incorporating newspaper clippings, wallpaper, and other everyday materials into their paintings—challenging the idea that art had to be purely painted or drawn.

There will be an opening reception for Bits and Pieces on Sunday, July 12 from 2 to 4 pm.

40 Cannon St in Poughkeepsie. gallery40pok.com