GV sculptor exhibits in Russia

Grand Valley art professor Elona Van Gent has long had an interest in juxtaposing 17th- and 18th-century Russian artifacts with her own contemporary sculpture. This summer, the Grand Rapids artist will get that opportunity as her artwork is exhibited in St. Petersburg, Russia, alongside the collections of Peter the Great.

Van Gent's exhibition, titled 'Artifacts and Anomalies: Cabinets of Wonder and the Play of Technology,' will be on display at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography from June 27-August 1. The Grand Rapids artist is in St. Petersburg now to help install the exhibit.

Van Gent is only the second contemporary artist and the first American artist to be featured at the the museum, which, along with the city of St. Petersburg, is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year.

The Peter the Great Museum is Russia's first museum. It houses artifacts and scientific specimens collected by Tzar Peter the Great and other early Russians. The collections -- made up of all manner of things odd or interesting, beautiful or bizarre, natural or manmade -- were placed in cabinets for display and instruction, thus the name 'cabinets of wonder.' Russians still refer to the Peter the Great Museum as 'Kunstkamera,' or cabinet of wonder.

Now, 300 years later, Van Gent has created her own 'Cabinet of Wonder,' on permanent exhibit at the Steelcase Library in GVSU's DeVos Center in downtown Grand Rapids. Featured in the glass and wood cabinet are what the artist calls 'hybrid monsters' -- oddly-shaped, three-dimensional figures that she designs digitally using a computer. The plastic and bronze sculptures are high-tech, Van Gent pointed out, but they resemble toys or anatomical anomalies such as those collected in cabinets in Russia hundreds of years ago.

'It puts a contemporary twist on the cabinets of wonder,' Van Gent said. 'It's also a nice bridging of art and science. A sense of wonder and inquiry is part of being an artist and scientist both.'