‘Art in the Health Services’ Series Features Photos

University Health Services (UHS) continues its Art in the Health Services series with “Projective Palimpsest: Photographs by Sean Buse,” showing through Nov. 21.

An opening reception, free and open to the public, will be held Thursday, Oct. 30 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the third-floor waiting room of UHS. Light refreshments will be served.

“Projective Palimpsest” is on view Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The show will be displayed on several floors of UHS, located at 1552 University Ave.

The exhibition takes its name from the palimpsest, a scroll, usually made of vellum, that has been written on and then erased several times so that there are many layers of writing.

“Photography is about light and what it can reveal,” says Buse, who photographs his subjects with images projected on them. “My series of projections asks many questions. Images are layered as in collage, not with scissors and paper, but with light conforming to the natural curves and angles of the body.”

The layering is similar to the palimpsest of old – a kind of writing on the body. At times the image appears to carve something into the body or create a sort of relief that has its own character. The work, highly symbolic, offers its own language to decode.

“The symbols are as important as the formal visual appearance,” says the artist. “I strive to make a piece that says something other than ‘;I want to be beautiful.’ ”

The Art in the Health Services series, says UHS Director Dr. Richard Keeling, “reflects the broad human experience of body, mind, and spirit. Having students’ works on our walls reminds us, and them, that a health service is a community resource, that our work is about the wholeness of people, and not just about their parts and fragments.”