Fashion icon Gabriel Asfour, architect Georgina Huljich and artist David Humphrey are among the cutting-edge visual thinkers who will visit Washington University in St. Louis as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring Public Lecture Series.
Presented each semester, the series highlights an international array of artists, architects, curators and designers. All talks are free and open to the public and begin at 6:30 p.m. in Washington University’s Steinberg Hall Auditorium unless otherwise noted. A 6 p.m. reception will precede each talk.
Asfour, a co-founder of the fashion collective threeASFOUR, will discuss his storied career Jan. 23. The recipient of a 2015 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, threeASFOUR fuses high technology with traditional craftsmanship to explore themes of collective consciousness and cultural co-existence. The group’s work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Met Costume Institute, among many others.
Humphrey, who will speak Feb. 4, is a prolific writer and artist known for bright, psychologically complex paintings and sculptures that deftly combine reference points and visual languages. Painterly rendering and gestural abstraction collide with graffiti-inflected shorthand, photo-projected snapshots and images sourced from the digital realm.
Huljich, who follows on Feb. 6, is principal and managing director of P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, a design/research architectural practice that has won international recognition for its innovative approach to form, material and digital technology. She previously worked at the Guggenheim Museum and Dean/Wolf Architects in New York and at Morphosis Architects in Los Angeles.
Other scheduled lectures include: architects Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse (Jan. 30), urban planner Doug Farr (Feb. 22) and landscape architect Gunther Vogt (March 25). For a complete list of speakers, visit www.samfoxschool.wustl.edu.
Steinberg Hall is near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards, immediately adjacent to Givens Hall and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Visit here for parking details.
