Go inside Fieldworks: Beyond Measure with a Thursday Night Late Gallery Talk from Associate Curator Pablo Barrera

The title wall of an exhibition in an art gallery, featuring text, video, a framed black-and-white photo and a car tire propped in the corner

Featuring objects, photographs, text and other ephemera from the fieldwork excursions of photographer Todd Stewart and art historian Robert Bailey. (Photo: Todd Stewart)

The relationship between humans and their environment gets the gallery treatment in Fieldworks: Beyond Measure. The fascinating new show winding throughout Oklahoma Contemporary's third-floor Mary LeFlore Clements Oklahoma Gallery features text, objects, photographs, video and ephemera from the fieldwork excursions of photographer Todd Stewart and art historian Robert Bailey, encouraging visitors to thoughtfully reflect on the natural world and the stories it tells.

Now viewers can go behind the interdisciplinary work of these two University of Oklahoma professors during tonight's Thursday Night Late Gallery Talk with Oklahoma Contemporary Associate Curator Pablo Barrera, offering an illuminating glimpse into this one-of-a-kind show, running through April 19 at your new arts center.

"The exhibition is looking back at the past five years and going through the archives and selecting just a small sample of the breadth of the projects that they've been undergoing for the past few years," Barrera explained. "This particular project is finally returning to Oklahoma after being exhibited and displayed in multiple locations including Utah and New Mexico. ... Since we are now in our new building at Oklahoma Contemporary, it seemed like a great moment to serve as a kind of homecoming for the Fieldworks project."

A wall in an art gallery depicts various photographs of Western landscapes, both framed and emblazoned on the wall itself, along with a video screen displaying an image of a black-and-white film

Fieldworks: Beyond Measure is on display in Oklahoma Contemporary's third-floor Mary LeFlore Clements Oklahoma Gallery through April 19.

This concept of place and movement is central to the duo's critical, artistic investigation. "We're really interested in how the land reflects the larger relationship between nature and culture," Stewart said. "That relationship exists everywhere ... but the fact that the space [of the American Southwest] is so immense and the landscape is so austere, so much of these things we're looking for — and I don't mean literal, physical things — are right there on the surface, where you can find them."

Tonight's Gallery Talk with Barrera kicks off at 7 p.m. CST on Facebook, YouTube and right here on our website. Before you tune in to learn more about Fieldworks: Beyond Measure, check out our video interview with artists Bailey and Stewart below.