MCCC RETROSPECTIVE: Work by the acclaimed local artist and MCCC educator Frank Rivera, such as his “Liar, Liar,” shown here, is part of a retrospective of his work at the Gallery at Mercer County Community College. There will be an opening reception tonight, March 11, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The show will run through April 2. Gallery hours are Mondays through Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, visit: www.mccc.edu/gallery. (Image Courtesy of MCCC).

There will be an opening public reception tonight, Wednesday, March 11, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the gallery in Mercer County Community College (MCCC) for an exhibition of work by the acclaimed artist and former MCCC professor Frank Rivera.

The Gallery is located on the second floor of the Communications Building on the college’s West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road.

“Frank Rivera Retrospective: Selected Works 1945–2015” will continue through Thursday April 2.

Mr. Rivera taught art at MCCC from 1967 to 2003 and is now professor emeritus there. A resident of Hightstown, he has lived and worked in Mercer County for more than 40 years. His work has been exhibited prominently in the United States, including exhibits at the Whitney Museum, the Luise Ross Gallery, and the Abington Art Center, as well as numerous venues in Paris, where Rivera regularly spends time painting. He is a graduate of Yale Art School, with an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania.

According to MCCC Gallery Director Dylan Wolfe, the show will include work from all phases of the painter and educator’s creative career, which in earlier years featured large-scale abstractions, while in more recent times has focused on smaller narrative pieces inspired by storyboard graphics and computer art. The exhibition even includes a few pieces preserved from Rivera’s childhood.

“The work … has been arranged by theme and subject rather than by chronology. It is the persistence of these themes and subjects – not always linear – that has shaped my vision over the decades,” notes Mr. Rivera in the exhibition catalog,

The artist’s previous exhibitions have drawn glowing reviews. “There is an iconic quality to his pieces, recalling the carefully wrought panels and religious icons of medieval art,” wrote Cathy Vikso, of the Trenton Times. “Rivera says [his] paintings are autobiographical, but each [work] seems more like a distillation than a rapidly jotted down memory, and their complexity in such small dimensions is made the more interesting for their visual clarity, though their meanings are often elusive,” said Dan Bischoff of the Newark Star-Ledger. Dallas Piotrowski, former curator at the Chapin Gallery, has noted that “paintings of Rivera are for the mind.”

Gallery hours are Mondays through Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, visit: www.mccc.edu/gallery.

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