The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Art Gallery is kicking off the spring semester with three new featured exhibitions. 

“Sigh-Fi” exhibit artist Lap Le will give a guest lecture at 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13, in the UALR Fine Arts Building Room 161. An opening reception for all three exhibits will follow the lecture, beginning at 7 p.m. in the building lobby.

The first exhibit, opening Jan. 10, will showcase the work of Carey Roberson, an associate professor of art who teaches photography and digital imaging at UALR. Roberson’s exhibit, “I wish I would have hugged them more,” will be featured in the Maners/Pappas Gallery until Feb. 26.

Roberson’s artwork integrates traditional studio media with new digital technologies and methods to create quiet personal narratives. His work has been shown in more than 70 competitive, invitational, and solo exhibitions.

Artist Bruce Reed’s exhibit, “Burlesque Show,” will run from Jan. 14 to Feb. 26 in Gallery III on the second floor of the Fine Arts Building. The exhibit highlights sculptural forms in buried hardwoods. Reed, a woodworker for 20 years, acquired a wood lathe and began exploring the possibilities of the tool in 2008.

“Sigh-Fi” is a group exhibition on display in Gallery I Jan. 14 to March 3, 2017.  The exhibition temporarily retrofits a typical gallery space into a user-altered infrastructure that manipulates relationships between architectural volume and contemporary art.

Architect Aaron Jones will infuse UALR Gallery I with a collapsible platform for exhibiting contemporary art that embraces the cognitive dissonance which emphasizes science fiction. Work by Hartmut Austen, Lap Le, Anne Libby, Sondra Perry, Martine Syms, and Tan Zich will be presented in this transformed space.

Artist Sondra Perry recently exhibited the work included in “Sigh-Fi” at The Kitchen in New York City. Her solo exhibit, “Resident Evil,” received critical acclaim in the New York Times and ArtForum. Martine Syms has been praised in the Los Angeles Times, ArtNews, The Guardian, and the New York Times. Both Aaron Jones and Anne Libby have received coverage in Art in America.  

The exhibit’s curator, Haynes Riley, established the Good Weather art gallery in the single-car garage of his brother’s home in a residential neighborhood in North Little Rock. He exhibits contemporary artists in the garage gallery and recently participated in Art Basel in Miami, where he showcased many of the artists he represents.

The UALR Art Gallery, located in the UALR Fine Arts Building, is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, and 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The galleries are closed on university holidays. All exhibits are free and open to the public.

For more information, contact UALR Gallery Director Brad Cushman at becushman@ualr.edu or 501.569.8977.

In the upper right photo, Architect Aaron Jones designed a collapsible platform for exhibiting contemporary art for the “Sigh-Fi” exhibit in UALR Art Gallery 1.