Julia LeBayShed

An opening reception will be held Friday, Jan. 22, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Center for the Visual Arts Haigh Auditorium. UT President Lloyd Jacobs is scheduled to speak. Troffkin will give a lecture about the exhibit and his own work, and then he will present awards.
 
Troffkin joined the Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State in fall 2009. Prior to that, he was a lecturer in sculpture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2000 to 2002 and a visiting assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis from 2002 to 2009. At Washington University, Troffkin served terms as sculpture area coordinator and director of graduate studies; he oversaw a transition in the master of fine arts curriculum to a multidisciplinary format to encourage artistic dialogue and collaboration across media and fields of inquiry.
 
He received the master of fine arts degree in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and a bachelor of arts degree in fine art and English literature from Amherst College in Massachusetts.
 
About his artwork, Troffkin wrote, “My interests lie at a crossroads where expectations of future progress encounter these uncertainties: Can the consequences of progress be foreseen? Is the notion of progress itself a matter of faith? And if so, upon what foundation is such faith built? My artworks mark and investigate these crossroads. They are pieces of fiction, fabricated from the familiar visual language of the commercial products and industrial objects that inhabit our architecture and dot our urban and rural landscapes. Through the reproduction and alteration of such technological objects into sculptural form, I aim to provide a focal point for considering their psychic impact.”
  
The annual student exhibition can be seen Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
 
For more information on the free, public exhibit, opening reception and lecture, call the Art Department at 419.530.8300.