“There’s chaos in everything, but upon examination, patterns emerge from within that chaos,” says Gina Pasquali ’15.
Grace Ogihara
16 Jul 2015
Art and entropy and curating a show from a world-class collection of contemporary sculptors, painters, and multimedia visionaries—sounds like nice work if you can get it, right? Those are the stars that aligned for students under Tobias Wofford, an assistant professor of art history, for the exhibition Interrupting Entropy: Selections from the Betlach Collection.
Students taking Wofford’s class Curating Contemporary Art last year were responsible for the exhibit from conception to grant proposal to catalog. The show ran from September 2014 through February 2015 in the gallery in Archives and Special Collections at the Orradre Library. It displayed some gems acquired by Charles J. Betlach II, a San Diego pharmaceutical scientist and art collector. There was work by video artist Jill Taffet, painter Ed Belbruno, and photographer Stan Douglas. Normally a show like this would take much longer to curate. The work the students chose, says Gina Pasquali ’15, demonstrates “how there’s chaos in everything, but upon examination, patterns emerge from within that chaos.” Wofford seconds that; he says the results blend art, culture, and science through a sense of inquiry and playfulness.