BY SARAH RUIZ, Staff Reporter

Walking into the Sarah Spurgeon Gallery and seeing the walls plastered with sexual subjects, death and geometric figures may confuse anyone who is unclear of what they are looking at.

“Sex, Death, and Geometry: A Thirty-Year Retrospective” will be gracing the walls of the gallery Nov. 7-Dec. 8.

The exhibit is the work of artist David Brody and is a collection of his works over 30 years.

“Probably our points of view [are changing] and it’s probably very natural that the kind of work we’ll make over another decade is likely to change,” Brody said. “The exciting thing is that as an artist you really get to follow your own interest.”

After growing up in New York and traveling around the world, Brody settled in Seattle. He believes that art in the city has improved and continues to change.

Brody teaches painting and drawing at the University of Washington. He moved to Seattle from Italy in 1996 when he received a teaching job at the university.

“I think there’s up and downs, certainly the [Seattle Art Museum had] some major renovations,” Brody said. “It’s a very impressive looking museum at this point, much more so than when I got here.”

Heather Horn Johnson, Central Washington University’s gallery manager, is excited to have the exhibit on campus and represent the contemporary art world with the topics depicted in Brody’s exhibit.

While Horn Johnson knows the               nature of Brody’s work may offend some, she is hoping that this exhibit will accurately represent what is going on in the contemporary art world.

“I think that it’s important for people that are really interested in contemporary art,” Horn Johnson said.  She then added that depicting sexuality is “something that’s really been going on in the contemporary art world for a while now.”

Another point of the exhibit is to help educate the community on this prominent artist whose work has been featured in several international art museums and fairs, such as the ARCO Art Fair in Madrid.

“When I was a little kid, I always drew pictures,” Brody said. “There was never a period where I stopped drawing, and I got my first set of oil paints when I was ten.”

Since then, Brody has experimented with many subject matters and mediums. At Central’s display is pieces from over 30 years. It includes works done with oil paints and digital creations.

“Any medium has its great benefits and limitations,” Brody said.

To Brody, the differences in these mediums offer new ideas and creations with each new medium.

“I think all these things offer different opportunities.” Brody said. “Oil painting has [a] real manifest materiality. When you’re working digitally there is no materiality.”

In the exhibit, viewers will see how Brody has grown as an artist. Brody wanted to be sure to display the past, present and future of who he is as an artist.

“That’s one of the reasons it would be a good kind of exhibit at an academic institution,” Brody said. “It does kind of put in front of a group of people what a life dedicated to these pursuits looks like. And one of the exciting things about being an artist is that you don’t know what you are going to do next.”

The exhibit may shock some, and sophomore Spanish-teaching major Patrick Carpenter is counting on that.

“I think that once everyone kind of gets past all the shock and awe… it’s actually a really well done exhibit,” Carpenter said. “If they pay attention to all of the work, they can see quite amazing attention to detail throughout the work.”