Daveen Koh '14 dives into the mysterious new Tjaden gallery exhibit by Cornell professor Graham McDougal. 

Meredith Gudesblatt '12 examines the lingering effects of Argentinian dictatorship in a new photography exhibit at Tjaden Gallery.

Fiona Modrak walks us through an array of exhibits at Tjaden Gallery.

Do photos tell us anything about history?

New ideas of the city in Tjaden Gallery.

The New York City art culture was alive at Cornell University on Tuesday night. New Works on Paper is an art exhibit of Mollie Miller ’10 and Sarah Carpenter ’10, students in the College of Art, Architecture and Planning (Carpenter writes for The Sun). The exhibit opened Tuesday night and will remain so until this Friday at the Olive Tjaden Gallery.

So. You’re in Ithaca. You’re in college. What to do now?

Yes; I’m Serious, and Don’t Call Me Surely, the thesis show of M.F.A. student Allen Camp ’09, is as funny as its title promises. However, it is equally serious. A selection of three-dimensional works in a limited palette, the show investigates the often-paradoxical relationship between objects and their “idiographic symbols.”

The fulcrum is a handshake. It’s an exchange of power, a link between bodies, the passing of traditions and a tight squeeze for love.

“It all rests in the hands,” Noah Robbins ’10 said about the two statues he has constructed for his untitled exhibit that explores these themes and is currently open in Tjaden gallery.

Two heavy, white-plaster casts of individual male torsos perch atop wood crate-like pedestals. The two bodies unite by extended arms — they hold hands out between the two wooden columns on which they rest. One body is from a smaller man, presumably a younger man, and both bodies seem immensely unyielding and weighty. The two arms that extend over the gap between the pedestals seem uncommonly fragile.