Yevgeniya Kaganovich is a visual artist interested in the objects ability to communicate ideas through their implied use. Her work addresses the complexities of inner-personal and social interactions conditioned by the corporal body. Her pieces can be thought of as body extensions that display a psychological condition, and as projections of mental habits and bodily knowledge. By creating unsettling psychological spaces she intends to encourage both introspection and outreach.

Heather Layton's work explores communication, miscommunication and the psychological dynamics of intimacy and isolation. Her paintings juxtapose interdependent, vulnerable characters as they make desperate and often unfulfilling attempts to emotionally connect with each other. While some of the characters are specific in age and gender, many others are masked in such a way that their roles and identities become ambiguous. These characters suggest a world more accurate that our own, a world where contradictions can coexist, and a world where everyone knows that the very act of taking a deep breath also requires pushing it back out.

Heather graduated summa cum laude from Syracuse University with a BFA in Art Education and 2-D Design. She taught art in the public school system before returning to complete an MFA in Painting from SUNY New Paltz. Her work is greatly influenced by her travels throughout Eastern and Western Europe, North Africa, Mexico, the United States, and the Carribean. Heather is a Visiting Assistant Professor and Studio Coordinator at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, where she teaches a range of courses in Painting, Drawing, Alternative Media, and Performance.

Hearing Aids and Other Personal Prosthetics combines the ambiguous body objects of Yevgeniya Kaganovich with the absurd character paintings of Heather Layton.

Kaganovich, a metals artist and Assistant Professor at UWM, has selected three-dimensional pieces from her own collection that act as devices, which extend the body and the senses in order to intensify several modes of communication between people. As wearable objects, these ‘hearing aids' allow people to listen more carefully on a literal and metaphorical level: feeling emotions more intensely.

The work exhibited by Heather Layton, a painter who is currently teaching at the University of Rochester, also attempts to unveil forms of interaction and communication through her work. Her paintings juxtapose interdependent, vulnerable characters as they make desperate and often unfulfilling attempts to emotionally connect with each other. The characters are created in a world where fiction and nonfiction are one and the same and where emotional closure is always a step away.

Together these works bring focus to the issues of interpersonal communication and psychological states of intimacy and isolation, providing an awkward tension between what is functional and dysfunctional.

January 27, 12pm Artist talk with Yevgeniya Kaganovich and Heather Layton

The UWM Union Art Gallery is designed to accommodate exhibitions of artwork, to act as a center for all areas of the visual and performing arts, and to support the growth of the fine arts community at UWM.  It also provides an out-of-classroom learning experience for the university students and faculty as well as an outlet for the university and community to interact. The Union Art Gallery exhibits national and regional exhibitions of art, as well as work created within the university community.