Object Permanence: Timea Tihanyi & Sylwia Tur is on view at Bellevue Arts Museum January 21 – May 29, 2022.

Bellevue, WA—Seattle-based ceramic artists Timea Tihanyi and Sylwia Tur will present their collaborative exhibition at Bellevue Arts Museum later this month. Object Permanence, which opens at BAM on January 21, explores the convergences and divergences between the makers’ artistic practices and personal histories.

The exhibition, which features porcelain sculptures and video works, takes the form of a sprawling structure composed of wooden crates. Individually, the crates hold sculptural vignettes, offering glimpses into the artists’ practices: Tihanyi’s blending of textile crafts and digital/3D-printing technology, and Tur’s exploration of giving physical form to language. As a whole, the exhibition will present a dialogue between the two artists, highlighting their different approaches to making and giving meaning, and the nature of their material choices, thought processes, and personal histories. A site-specific installation through-and-through, the exhibition will fully come to life as it’s installed in the Museum’s second-floor galleries.

The exhibition is Tihanyi’s and Tur’s contemplation on permanence and impermanence, absence and presence, and objecthood in our contemporary paradigm. Their works draw inspiration from the artists’ experiences immigrating to the United States from Hungary and Poland respectively, as well as from their backgrounds in the sciences. Tihanyi holds an MD with a focus in neuropsychology, and Tur is a linguist working on language processing for artificial intelligence systems. Both artists strive to establish connections between scientific and artistic methodologies through their artworks.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Timea Tihanyi is a Hungarian-born interdisciplinary visual artist and ceramicist living and working in Seattle, Washington. She is a Teaching Professor in the Interdisciplinary Visual Arts program at the University of Washington, as well as the founder and director of Slip Rabbit, a space for experimentation and learning at the intersections of art, design, architecture, science, and engineering.

Raised in Poland, Sylwia Tur received her MA and BA in linguistics from the University of Washington, where she also completed post-baccalaureate studies in ceramics. Tur’s work has been exhibited at the Linda Hodges Gallery, Foster/White Gallery, Monarch Contemporary Gallery, and more. In addition to her art practice, Tur is a linguist working on language processing for AI at Appen.

Object Permanence: Timea Tihanyi & Sylwia Tur is organized by Bellevue Arts Museum and curated by Lane Eagles. Media sponsor: KCTS 9. In-kind support from Seattle SignShop.

ABOUT BELLEVUE ARTS MUSEUM

Bellevue Arts Museum provides a public forum for the community to contemplate, appreciate, and discuss visual culture. We work with audiences, artists, makers, and designers to understand our shared experience of the world. bellevuearts.org.

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