The HS/HSL will be hosting a free lecture and luncheon on June 30th from 11:45 am – 1pm, featuring artist Nickolai Walko. He will be discussing his exhibit hosted at the HS/HSL’s Weise Gallery, “Tape: A Visual Dissection.” This free event will take place at the HS/HSL’s Gladhill Boardroom. To RSVP email: events@hshsl.umaryland.edu. Questions? Please call 410-706-7545.
Nickolai Walko was born in Perm, Russia in 1991. He was adopted from a Siberian orphanage two years later by an American couple and moved to the United States. He received his BFA in sculpture from the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2014. Nickolai started to use masking tape not for its usual purpose, to mask off certain areas for paint to cover, but instead to produce high contrast, intricate, and stylized works of art. He was introduced to the medium in high school and it “stuck to him” through college though his major was sculpture in which he produced street sign body armor and other metal creations. The Renaissance and Pop Art movements have served as core inspirations, as well as the medical field. He strives to capture the human form as well as animalistic forms through the non-traditional medium of masking tape. In a way, the tape acts as a skin, and the X-Acto knife is a scalpel. Producing these works, he feels like a surgeon and removing the skin (tape) provides access for the public to view the anatomy beneath in his stylized diagrams and scenes. The exhibit will be displayed in the Library’s Weise Gallery from June 24 through September 1, 2016. For more information about the artist and his work go to http://www.nickolaiwalko.com/tapegallery.html .