(WEST LONG BRANCH, NJ) -- Monmouth University's DiMattio Gallery at Rechnitz Hall presents "I Wish That I Had Spoken Only of It All: 20 Years of Sheryl Oring’s I Wish to Say" by Sheryl Oring from September 3 to December 20, 2024.  The exhibit is free and open to the public.

With backgrounds in journalism and fine art, Sheryl Oring began her ongoing project I Wish to Say in 2004 from a concern that many people’s voices were not being heard. She started to take dictation from the public about what they wanted to say to the (next) President. Dressed as a 1960s secretary with a typewriter, she records whatever participants say onto a postcard, making copies with carbon paper. During larger events, a secretarial bank takes dictation. Oring mails the postcards to the White House and exhibits copies. To date she has mailed over 4100 postcards.

For this exhibition, MU’s DiMattio Gallery will chronologically display hundreds of I Wish to Say postcards, photographs, and videos of performances, along with larger prints of select postcard texts. A timeline on the wall will note the presidential elections that span Oring’s project. The empty wall space for 2024 will fill as MU student-typists add postcards they collect during the current election season. The other half of the gallery will showcase a selection of Oring’s related projects that all involve a question, active listening, and a typewriter for a secretary to record dictation. These include Collective Memory (September 2011), recorded memories of the 9-11 attacks; Travel Desk (2014), travel stories that were then carved into a wooden table now installed in the San Diego International Airport; and other artworks.

Multi-part programming will include an artist’s talk to showcase Oring’s timely and inclusive artmaking practice. MU students will participate as typists at numerous live events throughout the exhibition’s duration. MU faculty from various disciplines will hold public teach-ins in the gallery about topics related to Oring’s project. Finally, MU is collaborating with nearby Neptune and Long Branch school districts so that high school students can dictate their own postcards to the future president. As an educator, Oring has involved younger constituencies, empowering the next generation of participants in both US democracy and artmaking.

Sheryl Oring examines critical social issues through projects that incorporate old and new media to tell stories, examine public opinion, and foster open exchange. Using tools typically employed by journalists (the camera, the typewriter, the pen, the interview, and the archive), she builds on her experience in her former profession to create installations, performances, artist books, and internet-based works that address themes of citizenship, free expression, first amendment rights, story-telling, and activism through art. Oring received her MFA from the University of California at San Diego. She is currently a board member for the National Coalition Against Censorship. She has held several academic positions, most recently serving as the Dean of the School of Art at University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Oring has shown her work at the O1SJ Biennial; Bryant Park in Manhattan; the Brooklyn Public Library; and the Jewish Museum Berlin. She has also presented work at Art in Odd Places in New York; the Art Prospect festival in St. Petersburg, Russia; Encuentro in São Paolo, Brazil; and the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Dubai. She has completed public art commissions at the San Diego and Tampa International Airports. Collecting institutions include the Library of Congress; Museum of Modern Art; Tate Britain; Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg; and many others. 

There will be an Artist talk on Thursday, September 19, 2024 from 4:30pm-5:30pm at Monmouth University's Great Hall Auditorium.

The Opening Reception and Performance of I Wish to Say takes place Thursday, September 19, 2024 from 5:30pm-7:30pm.

DiMattio Gallery at Rechnitz Hall is located on the campus of Monmouth University (400 Cedar Avenue) in West Long Branch, New Jersey. With the opening of the Joan and Robert Rechnitz Hall, the creation of the DiMattio Gallery was also celebrated. Dedicated in 2013, the DiMattio Gallery is named in tribute to Professor Vincent DiMattio, a teacher and artist at Monmouth University since 1968. This two-story state of the art gallery offers nearly 2,000 square feet of exhibition space. In addition to presenting student exhibitions, the DiMattio Gallery has recently showcased exhibits including “Bruce Springsteen, A Photographic Journey,” as well as Jacob Landau and Robert Mueller collections.

This project is made possible with support from the Edna Wright Andrade Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation. Thank you also to ArtNOW, the Helen Bennett McMurray Endowed Chair of Social Ethics, and Monmouth University’s Department of Art and Design and Department of Curriculum and Instruction.