Squashing Bugs is the latest show at the U of M School of Art Student Gallery that ran from Feb. 20 to 26. It featured art by Juca Aquino and Julia Mary Langer, made with the abstraction of found objects.

Their art is similar in a visual sense, but juxtapose one another in character. Aquino’s art is made from exploring his surroundings, and Langer’s is made of her own belongings. To that end, Artalogue podcast host and curator of the show Madison Beale notes that Aquino creates art devoid of noticeable influence from any known person while Langer utilizes found objects to enhance her understanding of herself.

Upon entry, the viewer first encounters two equally large works hung on the wall opposite the doorway. On the left is Langer’s black smudged canvas resembling a touchscreen, and on the right are four stain-covered tabletops from Aquino’s Homework series — an expansive collection of tabletops worn from decades of use in the school of art.

Aquino took the tabletops after spending a year observing them with fascination. He and a friend secretly removed the tabletops from the Art Barn studios at night and made new ones by painstakingly carving wood to avoid students or faculty suspecting anything. Aquino recalled that no one else knew about the heist until he put them on display as art. 

Aquino’s artwork is appreciative of anonymous characters shaping often-dismissed objects. In many cases, such as the Homework series, he focuses on how the collective students of the school of art have shaped their physical environment. Other works of Aquino shown in the student gallery are blocks and plywood stained from fine art students’ printmaking, a lineup of broken and discarded wooden sledgehammer shafts he collected from a quarry and various plastic hospital urinals which he covered in plaster to the point of unrecognizable abstraction.

Langer’s work, on the other hand, is made through introspection. She recently suffered the grief of losing her mother, and one of the first things she did in her wake was repaint everything in her studio a neutral shade of blue to which she had taken a great liking. Langer’s blue desk, chair and tower of canvas stretchers taken from the studio are on display. Also included in the show are paint-covered tarps draped over a podium as well as a film depicting the sentiment of Langer’s tiring grief and demonstrating the creation of the previously mentioned art.

The exhibit’s name, Squashing Bugs, refers to the process of resolving issues while designing a computer program, in reference to Aquino’s problem-solving abilities while creating the show. The title is also a nod to his personal interest in coding.