Perrino to give gallery talk at Newport Art Museum

In conjunction with Newport Gallery Night and his current exhibit “Shelf Life,” Gerry Perrino, associate professor and chairman of the Department of Art, will give a gallery talk at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 11 at the Newport Art Museum, located at 76 Bellevue Ave. in Newport. A reception will follow the talk.

“Shelf Life,” is on display at the Newport Art Museum’s Wright Gallery through Sunday, May 12. In the exhibit, Perrino turns banal objects into visual metaphors, then invites viewers to imagine the stories behind the images.

The paintings in the exhibit are taken from a larger series that Perrino exhibited at HallSpace in Boston last year. In that exhibit, “the work was plentiful enough to make clear reference to the way that symbolism in an object can shift given changes in its context and syntax,” he writes in his artist’s statement. “This current exhibit offers a more focused perspective on this body of work and allows me the luxury of concentrating on the narrative aspect of the work.”

A member of the Salve Regina faculty since 1999, Perrino holds a B.A. in art (printmaking) from Rhode Island College and an M.F.A. in studio arts (painting) from Syracuse University.