The Samek Art Museum has proudly opened an exhibit featuring the work of artist R. Luke DuBois. The exhibit, entitled “Portraits and Landscapes,” features pieces that offer a new take on the typical portrait and landscape in order to show his interpretation of the 21st century identity.

“DuBois is using big data and new technologies to give us new takes on the ideas of portraiture and landscape through artwork that is based on computer programming, text, sound, and video, as opposed to traditional paint and canvas,” Greg Stuart, the public programs and outreach manager for Samek said.

DuBois’s exciting interpretations of “big data” give us a new perspective on not only the information we have at our disposal today, but also on life in the 21st century. In one of his pieces entitled “A More Perfect Union,” he uses language from 19 million online dating profiles to create a map that in many ways has a lot to say about our social world. By using information outside of its normal context, DuBois makes us think twice about the things that we are exposed to everyday.

“We’re really excited to bring his work to Bucknell because data visualization is such a crucial issue lately as we try to make sense of the huge amounts of information we process daily from online sources. DuBois does it in a way that really makes us ask larger questions about how we consume this information. Also, given DuBois’s interest in film, music, and literature—as well as the connections to computer engineering, statistics, and information design—we thought this exhibition would have a lot of interdisciplinary appeal across campus,” Stuart said.

This modern multimedia exhibit has something that will spark an interest in any University student.  In addition to pieces like “A More Perfect Union,” DuBois creates videos, such as his work “Academy,” which takes Oscar winning films from the past 75 years and fits them all into 1-minute pieces.

“When I curate exhibitions for the Samek Art Museum, I try to bring the best of the art world to Bucknell and DuBois is one of the most innovative and relevant artists working today. With this show in particular, I wanted to challenge assumptions about what art is or can be. It’s subtitled ‘Portraits and Landscapes’ and when you come to the gallery, you won’t see anything that looks like a traditional portrait or landscape, but if you look closely you’ll see that’s exactly what these artworks are. Dubois is an artist who speaks the language of the 21st century; what better to bring for the classes of 2015-19?” Director of Samek Art Museum Rick Rinehart said.

Check out this interesting exhibit in the Samek Gallery on the third floor of the Elaine Langone Center from Aug. 18 until Dec. 6.