Bygone colleges
From Chantal Zakari’s show “Congent Message,’’ at the Kingston Gallery, Boston, through March 31
The gallery says that her show “hails from the future with nostalgic postcards of defunct colleges. Through the use of a rough halftone pattern the images of a bygone era blur and disintegrate into painterly abstraction. This collection of postcards includes stories about Alliance College, now a state prison, Virginia Intermont College, whose campus has been bought by a Chinese university, and Mt. Ida College, in Newton, Mass.,embroiled in a feud about how public funds should be spent.
“‘Cogent Message’ is also the title of an encyclopedic photobook in the show, where idyllic images retrieved from schools’ marketing campaigns emerge from the white background of corporate letterheads. Interspersed with school logos we see part time faculty who barely make ends meet, students starting life in debt and staff suddenly finding themselves unemployed.’’