TRA NSF orM 1
TRANSFORM FEATURI NG ART WO RK BY
tinalinville JAIMEscholnick JRURETSKY August25-SeptembeR18, 2014
Cov er im a g e s : Des ign b y R e b e c c a M c K i n n e y : f e a t u r i n g R a i n b o w E d g e s ( Sophom o r e Ye a r ) b y Ti n a L i n v i l l e , M y Te m p l e b y J . R . U r e t s k y, and Swo o s h b y J a i m e S c h o l n i c k , c o u r t e s y o f t h e a r t i s t s . All doc u m e n t a t i o n p h o t o g r a p h s b y J e ff R a u , f r om ex h i b i t i o n i n t h e E a r l & Vi r g i n i a G r e e n A r t G a l l e r y. All v ideo s t i l l s b y J . R . U r e t s k y, c o u r t e s y o f t h e a r t i s t . Tr ans f or m ( e x h i b i t i o n c a t a l o g ) , E d i t e d b y J e ff R a u Feat ur e d A r t i s t s : Ti n a L i n v i l l e , J a i m e S c h o l n i c k , J . R . U r e t s k y Cont r ibu t i n g a u t h o r s : Vi r g i n i a B o e r s m a , S h a n a N y s D a m b r o t , C h r i s D a vi d so n Copy r ig h t © 2 0 1 5 E a r l & Vi r g i n i a G r e e n A r t G a l l e r y All r ight s r e s e r v e d . Fir s t Ed i t i o n . Book de s i g n b y R e b e c c a M c K i n n e y. Publis he d t h r o u g h I s s u u . c o m Ear l & Vi r g i n i a G r e e n A r t G a l l e r y Biola Un i v e r s i t y A r t D e p a r t m e n t 13800 B i o l a Av e . , L a M i r a d a , C A 9 0 6 3 9 562. 903 . 4 8 0 7 • w w w. B i o l a . e d u / A r t G a l l e r y No par t o f t h i s b o o k m a y b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m wit hout w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r.
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CONTENTStable Transform Exhibition Statement
7 JEFFRAU 10 LINVILLE 12 VIRGINIABROERSMA 16 24 SCHOLNICK 26 SHANANYSDAMBROT 32 40 URETSKY 42 CHRISDAVIDSON 48 54 58
Reclaimed/Reconfigured: The Work of Tina Linville Tina Linville Images
Jaime Scholnick: Time and Timelessness
Jaime Scholnick Images
Refusing the System: The Video Work of J.R. Uretsky
J.R. Uretsky Images Contributor Profiles
Acknowledgments & About the Gallery
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Transform Installation View
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TRANSFORM
brings together new and recent works by Tina Linville, Jaime Scholnick, and J.R. Uretsky. All three artists develop their work through a studio practice that may be most concisely described as mixed media sculpture— beginning with ordinary materials and found objects that are transformed into something new, greater than the sum of its parts. At the hands of these artists, discarded packing material is admired for its complex scupltural forms, piles of fabric and netting become a skin for anthropomorphic objects, and the human figure is transformed into strange creatures. 7
tinalinville
creates sculptures that seem to have a mysterious connection to bodies. Her work often begins with salvaged objects that are wrapped in a patchwork skin of fabric and netting that acts to partially conceal the objects within, but never fully erases thier original identity. These found objects then carry their complex histories with them as they become part of a new body. In this way, collections of salvaged material, with fabric, netting, paint, and thread, take on a shape of relatable anthropomorphic forms that seem to have thier own storied histories worn plainly on their skin and subtly visible just below the surface.
JAIMEscholnick
challenges us to re-examine the common polystyrene forms that we have all encountered protecting our precious new consumer goods. Scholnick adopts this often overlooked and quickly discarded material as her primary canvas, meticulously covering the complex surfaces with varying colors and textures. The result is often surprisingly beautiful abstract forms that are a joy to behold, but there is also a darker implication. As they gather in such massive clusters in the gallery, the sculptures also begin to appear as tumbleweeds of waste, a byproduct of our intense appetite for more and more stuff. By drawing our attention to this ubiquitous material, Scholnick both marvels at the beauty of functional forms while also raising questions about the future cost of our rabid consumption habits.
JRURETSKY
incorporates mixed media sculpture into a performative practice which directly engages the body. Through the integration of the figure with abstract sculptural forms her subjects are stripped of a specifically human identity (and along with it, any specific gender identity). They are transformed into something strange and unfamiliar, but they maintain a relatable and strongly emotional presence. The specific experiences seem to have an autobiographical component, as the expressions of pain and loss are deeply felt, and the apparent responses alternate between courage and despair. Though we are not provided any clear resolution to the challenges faced, in the face of such vulnerable displays we are moved by these unique creatures to empathize with the Other. 8
Transform Installation Views
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Rainbow Edges (Sophomore Year) detail
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TINA LINVILLE 11
RECLAIMED/RECONFIGURED: THE WORK OF TINA LINVILLE
VIRGINIABROERSMA When I was a kid, a favorite pastime of mine was building forts: outdoor forts made in the hollowed-out insides of bushes or towers of cardboard boxes, and indoor forts made out of sheets, pillows and furniture on the floor of my bedroom. I have memories of chair legs and broomsticks creating tent poles and the light passing through patterned sheets casting a soft glow on the hidden and stuffy cave created inside. These memories come flooding back to me when I look at Tina Linville’s work because they remind me of the inventive creation of youth and the fantasy of building something remarkable. One quickly realizes her work is best experienced when you slow down and linger. Her bulbous, tuber-like forms at first disguise what is beneath their surface through what looks like a giant patchwork skin. Fabric, which you soon realize is nylon (and transparent) is stretched like a cocoon over biomorphic forms and bizarre armatures, and reveals layers of objects and materials that are covered, wrapped and embedded. After spending time with Linville in her studio it becomes clear that the term “builder” could describe her almost as well as “artist.” Her constructions are grown from scraps, salvaged objects, or craft materials that have caught her attention and become meaningful to her. As she works with them, they quickly begin to take form - growing and mutating - in some ways crudely and hastily being attached to construct her ideas on impulse. I imagine her working in her studio like Richard Dreyfuss’ character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind - driven by some
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unknown necessity to form the shape of Devil’s Tower out of any material at hand. Likewise, Linville’s sculptures come from a place of urgency and instinct, as well as whim. Her objects grow into structures that are neither body, nor architecture, but some combination of the two that makes something truly other. While there is that impulsive side to her work, the elements in Linville’s sculptures are also highly considered. Every tiny detail down to the end of a thread that has been left unsnipped is important. This is where the slowing down and noticing kicks in. As you move around (and through, in some cases) Linville’s forms - her hanging bulbs, wall growths or standing structures - details begin to catch your attention. An opening that was disguised by fabric on your first pass now reveals a tunnel burrowing into a deeper cavity. What looked like an uneven pillow lump (upon closer inspection) is actually a sculpted pile of cupcakes used as filling. In Rainbow Edges, Sophomore Year a pointer finger from a yellow housewife’s kitchen glove pokes out of a crevice formed by the meeting point of two rolls as if she is telling you to “hang on a sec” while she’s being sucked away. What is surprising about the work is how its clunky handiwork and impertinent shapes are finessed into striking and nuanced forms. Linville’s skills as an artist/builder are highlighted when it comes to organizing the jumbles into compelling abstractions that defy easy categorization, but reference pods, limbs, torsos, fungi, cocoons, organs with arteries, tents and towers. They are also (at times) complicated by the materials; while bedazzled in places with sequins, colorful sewing pins or metallic pipe cleaners, the work shows both an amusement with those materials and a darker sensibility with their use. The reference to “women’s work” 13
Rainbow Edges (Sophomore Year) detail
Preen & Sequin Trap detail
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Rainbow Net detail
- sewing, quilting, crafts - is definitely present and is an intentional investigation. However, Linville’s nod towards femininity becomes blurred by the non-functional and unpretty gestalt. That’s not to say that her work is not attractive or alluring in any way; in fact many of her choices are incredibly seductive: the combinations of textures, the lovely use of sherbet colored gradients, the appeal of hosiery. It’s as if we are looking at a negligee after being ravaged that has been pieced together in an attempt to coyly cover once again. It is in this same way that Linville’s work bypasses a quick misperception that it is simply womanish, moving towards that darker, more complex read. There is no timidity in her process, in fact she is quite brazen - there is no smoothing over and prettying up; no apologizing. There is however both a sense of fantasy and playfulness. At times her work does have the look of a child’s fort built up out of sheets and pillows in the living room. But the finishing of the work is done by the viewer who either brings their optimism and sees the potential, or skepticism and sees the unvarnished truth of mismatched materials meeting in zigzag seams. Neither is right or wrong, but instead has a ping-pong effect bouncing back and forth from fantasy to reality, and herein lays the potency of her work. It’s a cliché to consider an artist’s work as autobiographical, but I think in this case it may be appropriate. When talking about her work, Linville lovingly refers to them as being like her on her best day, and it’s that kind of connection and intimacy that’s apparent in her work. I, too, felt connected to the work by way of the familiarity of the materials - the wellworn fabrics like a favorite pillow or dress that you can never get rid of. Likewise, experiencing Tina Linville’s creations are like visiting a friend and being invited to play in her fort.
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TINA LINVILLE ADDING UP A CHAIR AND TWO APPLES 2014 mixed media sculpture 61” x 60” x 17” courtesy of the artist 17
TINA LINVILLE RAINBOW NET 2014 mixed media sculpture 39” x 28” x 6” courtesy of the artist 18
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TINA LINVILLE RAINBOW EDGES SOPHOMORE YEAR 2014 mixed media sculpture variable dimension courtesy of the artist 20
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from left to right:
TINA LINVILLE POMDOT HAIL PROPER
SEQUIN TRAP
PREEN
2014
2014
2014
2013
mixed media sculpture variable dimensions courtesy of the artist 23
Layered Rectangles detail
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Jaime Scholnick 25
JAiMESCHOLNICK
(JS)
TIME AND TIMELESSNESS Interview witH
SHANANYSDAMBROT(SND) The sculptural works by Los Angeles artist Jaime Scholnick represented in Transform articulate a vision in which the conceptual and the aesthetic coalesce into singular objects which the artist regards as artifacts of this moment in time and civilization. Motivated both by a fascination with and an urge for the degradation of our culture of mass consumerism, her deployment of a kind of rococo folk-art density of pattern literally transforms the compellingly eccentric topographies of styrofoam packaging into delightful, obsessive, unlikely totems. Part painting, part sculpture, part architectural installation and part visual puzzle, Scholnick appreciates the feeling the viewer gets when they look at her pieces, recognizing that they have seen them before, yet are truly seeing them for the first time.
Swoosh details
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SND
Please talk about the relationship between materials and message in your work. What I mean is, your use of the styrofoam packing (polystyrene) in particular. Which came first, the idea or the object? Were you looking for a way to get sculptural/abstract after years of being known for figurative, narrative paintings and drawings? Or did the formal qualities of the material start the conceptual fire? I guess what I’m asking is, please describe the moment of inspiration that first prompted you to make this change several years ago.
JS
I first began using the polystyrene packing material very innocently. I WAS looking for a way out of this very narrative, overtly political work that I had been doing. I had been extremely angry and frustrated. When the Administration shifted to a more hopeful position with the entry of Obama to the presidency, I sort of had a big moment of relief. I was looking for a new, more hopeful direction. The use of the material came first. I had bought a parabolic heater from Costco and the packing material was so interesting. The “heater” was just this utilitarian thing I needed but the PACKING MATERIAL! I immediately started painting on it. I was really just doing it for my own pleasure; I never planned to show it. I remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe I am decorating Styrofoam (I now call it polystyrene as Styrofoam is a brand name). But I remembered a graduate professor telling the class that the work you do “in-the-closet” is the important work that you should pay attention to. As I kept working on the forms, and I only worked with black Flashe paint at the time, I realized that, intrinsically, the material held everything I had been trying to say in my narrative work.
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SND
Do you consider these to be abstract works? I ask because although in these particular sculptures there are no “images” per se, there is the object memory of the former contents of the styrofoam that always insist on being considered, and so there is something like narrative content. How do you balance this consideration in terms of the meaning of the work?
JS
They ARE abstract in that there is no OVERT meaning or imagery (although I am starting to combine imagery with form in the newest work). I dealt with the formal aspects of these pieces and let the line be dictated by the form. I really enjoyed this open-ended content. Of course all along I was thinking about the political nature of the material but I felt that I could be subversive for a change. Aesthetically the forms would pull you in and the viewer could add as much of that intrinsic meaning as they wanted. I didn’t have to ram it down your throat. It was so freeing to work spontaneously and have a “call and response” attitude to the work. I have very definite political ideas about the pieces, however. These forms show the best and the worst of our humanity. On one hand, we are an amazingly ingenious society with the ability to create such incredibly intricate, purposeful objects. I could not create such elegant (in some cases) pieces of sculpture. On the other hand, this ubiquitous material is a reminder of our wastefulness, our gluttony, our need for more, newer, a seemingly better “thing”. I am always astounded by the amounts of polystyrene I can collect and have in my studio. I am just one small being on this planet.
SND
Obviously you have not shied away from taking on thorny political and/ or social issues in the past—but always there was a figurative element involved in articulating those messages. How does that play out for you in these pieces?
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JS
Swoosh detail
Aaron’s Dream detail
Swoosh detail
There is no doubt, to me, that these pieces are extremely political. What they are not, however, is didactic. This was an element in my work that I wanted to move away from (as in my Chuckles series with the Bush Administration, the John Wayne series or even my Hello Kitty Gets a Mouth series). I wanted to react to this feeling I had of hopefulness, of our greatness as a society, yet temper it with this opposite feeling of helplessness to all these serious indicators of us screwing up the planet. I guess honestly, one of my deepest feelings about this work is one of “I give up! We are doomed.” In 100 years if someone should uncover this work, say, in an archeological ruin, they might think, “Wow, what a great society this was! Look at these amazing relics that are adorned so beautifully. I wonder what this (piece) was?” It’s my irreverent joke, I guess. 29
SND JS
YES!! ha ha hahahaha.. YES! We are going down! Lets go out in glory, I say! Lets make this garbage, that consists of these forms that are functionally beautiful, fantastic! It is ironic to me, that we can be of such high intelligence and creative abilities, yet be so damned stupid when it comes to the sheer preservation of our species and planet. I cannot reconcile this dilemma and so I throw up my hands and I will make art about it. I will document our moment in time.
JS SND
Do you think of your transformation of these materials as operating in a way that redeems their toxic presence on the earth, or the other way around to where your usage of them is a new way of highlighting that toxic wastefulness? I’m thinking of the way the pretty glitter and humor operated in your anti-W portraits; the pink glitter didn’t make me like Cheney, it served to highlight his evil through irony—would you say these works do the same for environmental issues, or…?
How important is it to you to have the original materials be recognizable versus disguised/mysterious? I was never interested in knowing what the forms held or where they came from. I looked at each form for its aesthetic quality and got into combining the forms to create more complex pieces. There are pieces that one would never have any idea of their original function, what thing it held. The MacBook Pro packing material comes to mind. You can see that in Layered Rectangles. It is the piece of the sculpture on the left side, in the back. It is made up of this repetitive, circular pattern that is so complex and intricate. It casts gorgeous shadows and reflects light in the most ethereal way. I could never have created this form. It’s almost the reverse of form following function!
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T-pot Fossil Tower detail
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jaIme scholnick Aaron’s dream 2014 acrylic and flashe paint on polystyrene 64” x 60” x 60” courtesy of the artist and CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles 33
JAIME SCHOLNICK SWOOSH 2014 mixed media sculpture variable dimensions courtesy of the artist and CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles 34
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jaIme scholnick LAYERED RECTANGLES 2012 acrylic and flashe paint on polystyrene 22” x 50” x 18” courtesy of the artist and CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles 37
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JAIME SCHOLNICK t-POT fossil tower 2014 acrylic and flashe paint on polystyrene 69” x 17” x 8” courtesy of the artist and CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles
right
JAIME SCHOLNICK RECTANGLE FOSSIL TOWER 2014 acrylic and flashe paint on polystyrene 69” x 17” x 8” courtesy of the artist and CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles 38
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My Temple detail
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J.R. URETSKY 41
RefusingtheSystem: The Video Work of J.R. Uretsky
CHRISDAVIDSON For J.R. Uretsky, art is birthed from failure: “The refusal of normative behaviors and beliefs creates space for innovation. Failure is not only the circumstance which brings us to this moment of refusal but also the banner we bear when we choose creativity over normativity.” Setting herself up for failure allows new things to be made. About her video pieces, she says, I [don’t know] a lot about technology, nor do I care a lot about it, and so I’m already working within a system that’s going to fail. Once I realize the system isn’t working, I have this moment of refusing the system. In that there’s space for me to make something new and something innovative, something weird. This process plays out in Uretsky’s work both materially and thematically. Fort (2:35) opens on a lined, yellow texture, faintly backlit. The texture appears to breathe. Are we looking at a microscopic view of human tissue? The camera rocks, as if to break inertia, before pulling back, silently, through a landscape of varying materials. Eventually, we see another, living texture amid the quilted cloth, hanging foam, tarpaulin, broom, and tape: human legs. There’s a person in there. As the camera continues outward, we see that the legs are suspended like the boy’s in The Giving Tree. The rest of the body is hidden.
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Fort detail
The piece’s title suggests children on rainy days using cushions and blankets to make a private space within a larger, communal space. The world has thwarted their plans, so they’ve raised an edifice as a form of play. Says Uretsky: “There’s no end to how children play, it’s actually their way of problem solving.” Children don’t “solve” the weather, per se. They innovate. They make something new and weird. A key pleasure of Uretsky’s work is its celebratory, innovative weirdness, manifest most clearly in its central sculptures. Uretsky says, “I love sculpture for its expanded (and expanding) definition. It’s a form that isn’t always fighting its history. Sculpture runs analogous to postmodern feminist practices: It’s communal. It’s plural. It’s of the body, or at least in conversation with the body.”
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This is true of Fort.The body is integrated into the sculpture, but it’s of a completely different material—alive, vulnerable, and isolated. Another video, My Temple (5:05), limns the communal possibilities of sculpture and the body. It opens on a reproduction of a classical temple in a Rhode Island park. Beyond it is a small lake. Birds chirp. Voices call in the background. The camera pans, cinematically, over a verdant meadow, resting on a cloth tarp hiding a mysterious bulk. On the soundtrack, a chorus sings polyphonic music. The cloth rises, revealing six pairs of legs, in tights of various hues, colored like Easter eggs. They dance to the wordless music under the shared cloth. Unlike the immobile, imposing stone temple, this “temple” moves with those dwelling within it. We cut to close-ups of the dancers’ mouths, pressed against the temple’s “outer wall.” Each emits, through and into the cloth, colored liquid, recalling the color of each dancer’s tights. The result is grotesque and playful; those who praise together mark their sites of praise. If Fort is passive, My Temple is about movement and dynamic expression. The camera pans back to the stone temple, where children now play on its steps. One child leaps into the grass—a spontaneous, unscripted moment symbolizing something important in Uretsky’s work. Without that stone temple, My Temple wouldn’t exist. Like the kid jumping from the hard, civic structure into the soft, living tissue of earth, Uretsky’s work leaps from traditions that have failed to account for her experience of the world. The work uses those traditions as springboard, even as it challenges them. This piece, she says, rejects “classical sculpture or a master form, replacing it with actual bodies. Bodies that are bowlegged, scrawny, chubby, queer and colorful. Because they are bodies, they won’t last very long. My Temple, or rather the lump of humanity I placed [in it], is a dying thing and in its death is more relatable than a classical sculpture or monument.”
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This brings us to another notion of failure in Uretsky’s work. Dorothy Sayers writes, “[I]t is unwise to suppose that all human experiences present problems [that can be solved]. There is no solution to death.” The ever-present possibility of complete failure (death of the body, death of the artwork) is critical to Uretsky’s process, even if her repeated failures are “masked” in the finished product: Uretsky reshot the Fort several times, each time with a better camera, each time rebuilding the fort. The whole process “was a huge learning curve with video.” My Temple came from similar trial and error. To make anything worthwhile, in other words, you must love it even when it fails you. You must let it (possibly) die.
My Temple details
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Love Hurts details
The longest piece, Love Hurts (16:10), begins with Uretsky, center screen, and silent. A mask obscures her face and extends above her head in a rubbery beehive. Her eyes regard the viewer with longing and vulnerability. After minutes of unsettling silence, Uretsky sings Love Hurts—a naked, heartsick song. The singing is full-throated, out of tune. She is soon joined by another Uretsky, in split screen, then a third. Each wears masks progressively more strange and puppet-like, a living triptych. When their unsynced voices let loose, the pathos is amplified. The masks, like those from ancient Greek tragedy, suggest that every expression of emotion is performance. The artifice gives performer and viewers leave to participate in shared human catharsis.
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The piece is absurd, over the top, ridiculous. Like love songs. Like love. Near the end of the song, one figure offers to the viewer a previously outof-frame ice cream cone, a sweet, comic, impossible to receive gesture. After her doppelgangers blink off the screen, the central figure continues to stare at the camera, eyes dazed, almost catatonic. It takes a lot out of a person to be so vulnerable in front of strangers. Her companions have left her. After a few minutes, she leaves us. The most poignant nexus of “failure” is the piece’s context. Love Hurts was made to be shown at Biola. Uretsky, an alum, no longer calls herself Christian. The explicit mission of Biola has thus failed to take root in her. Yet its legacy and tradition has not failed to inform Uretsky’s work, as she herself remarks: Believe it or not, much of my work starts with a bible verse or two. Matthew 18:20 stirred up Love Hurts. I have always struggled with the concept of God’s presence and so clung to this idea that where two or three gather in his name—he is there. What an interesting look at the power of community, intimacy and interpersonal relationships. Does this verse imply that we could conjure up the ol’ Holy Spirit just by hanging out with each other? What happens when one (me) leaves a community but still longs for God’s presence? Make three puppets and conjure that spirit by way of video! And what do I have to say to the spirit when he arrives? Your love hurt me. What J.R. Uretsky makes is marked by that hurt—by the ways we fail each other and ourselves. It also invites us to presence, and to possibility.
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j.R. URETSKY MY TEMPLE 2014 HD video 5 minutes 05 seconds courtesy of the artist 49
J.R. URETSKY LOVE HURTS 2014 HD video 16 minutes 10 seconds courtesy of the artist 50
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j.R. URETSKY FORT 2011 HD video 2 minutes 35 seconds courtesy of the artist 53
ARTIST
CONTRIBUTOR PROFILES TINALINViLLE www.tinalinvillestudio.com
Tina Linville creates artwork that side steps easy categorization, blurring distinctions between abstraction and representation, objecthood and
installation, form and surface. What is ordinary becomes mysterious and out of explainable parts comes an unexplainable whole. She received her MFA from California State University Long Beach, and has exhibited her work
across California in museums, galleries, and alternative art spaces such as the Torrance Art Museum, Den Contemporary, and 18th Street Art Center. Linville
ARTIST
maintains a studio in Long Beach, CA.
JAMIESCHOLNICK www.jaimescholnick.com
Jaime Scholnick is a visual artist working in a variety of mediums and forms. She received her MFA from The Claremont Graduate University. After a five year expatriation to Japan to study papermaking, Scholnick returned to Los Angeles in 1999. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums
nationally and internationally at PS1 Long Island City, PĂ˜ST, Angles Gallery and Bank Gallery Los Angeles, at the Torrance Museum of Art and theTall
Wall Gallery at the University of La Verne, CA. In Japan she has shown at the
Gallery Kobo Chika, Tokyo. She was the recipient of the Imadate Art Field Artist in Residence, Imadate Japan. Ms. Scholnick lives and maintains a studio in Los Angeles. Currently she is represented by CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles.
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ARTIST
J.R.URETSKY www.jruretsky.com
J.R. Uretsky weaves performance, video, puppetry, and sculpture into emotionally charged, affective artworks that shift seamlessly between
autobiography and fiction. Uretsky’s work confronts viewers with expressive
confessions that test the bounds of comfort, personal space, and acceptable
presence. The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific, forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.
Uretsky has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues in New York, Los Angeles, Finland, and most recently in the Entzaubert DIY Queer International
Film festival in Berlin, Germany. Her work was included in the 2013 DeCordova Biennial at The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. In 2013, she was the recipient of the RI State Council on the Arts Fellowship Merit Award in
Three-Dimensional Art. She has been an artist in residence at Fine Art Base
(California), The Dirt Palace (Rhode Island), Big Red & Shiny (Massachusetts) and Arteles Creative Center (Finland). Uretsky’s work has been published by
print, online and video journals such as Headmaster Magazine, Gaga Stigmata,
CURATOR
Big Red & Shiny and ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art.
JeffRAU www.jeffrau.com
Jeff Rau is an artist, curator, and educator based in Long Beach, CA. Since
2008, he has taught a variety of art courses at Biola University and is presently employed as the Gallery Director and Public Arts Curator. Rau received his MFA in Photography with a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from
California State University Fullerton. He is also a founding member of the curatorial collective Sixpack Projects.
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AUTHOR
ViRGINIABROERSMA Virginia Broersma is a Los Angeles based artist and writer. Her recent exhibitions include a solo show at Autonomie in Los Angeles, CA and Fermilab Art Gallery
in Batavia, IL and group exhibitions at the Palazzo della Provincia de Frosinone in Italy, the Oceanside Museum of Art, the Museum of Art and History and the
Riverside Art Museum in Southern California. Broersma has been the recipient of a several grants including funding from the California Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Puffin Foundation and was awarded a Community Arts Assistance
Program grant from the City of Chicago, IL, which she received in both 2010 and 2011.
Along with exhibiting her work, Broersma additionally interviews artists as artistto-artist conversations, which she publishes on the Huffington Post Blog. She recently became a member Durden and Ray, which is an artist-run group of
artists and curators who work collaboratively to create exhibition opportunities in
AUTHOR
cooperating gallery spaces around the world.
SHANANYSDAMBROT Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Los Angeles.
She is currently LA Editor for Whitehot Magazine, Contributing Editor for Art Ltd.,
Arts Editor for Vs. Magazine, and a contributor to the LA Weekly, Flaunt, the Huffington Post, Palm Springs Life, and KCET’s Artbound. Formerly Managing Editor at Flavorpill.com, her other publications have included Modern Painters, Art Re-
view, Artweek, ARTnews, The Believer, tema celeste, Angeleno, Art Asia Pacific, Bluecanvas, Scene, Coagula, THE Magazine LA, and Juxtapoz. She studied Art History at Vassar College, has written hundreds of essays for art books,
monographs, and exhibition catalogs, curates one or two exhibitions each year,
publishes short fiction, exhibits photography, and speaks in public with alarming frequency. An account of her activities is sometimes updated at sndx.net.
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AUTHOR
CHRISDAVIDSON Chris Davidson is Associate Professor of English at Biola University. He holds an MFA in creative writing from UC Irvine, and a BA in English from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. His poetry and criticism have appeared in Zocalo Public Square, Zyzzyva, Green Mountains Review, Jacket2, The Rumpus, The District, and elsewhere.
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acknowledgments Jeff Rau (Gallery Director and Curator) wishes to thank the faculty and staff of
the Biola University Art Department for their substantial support, with a special
credit to Dan Callis who initially imagined bringing these three artists together and trusted me to carry out his vision. Further thanks to the artists for their excitement and personal investment in this project. I am especially grateful to J.R. Uretsky
for her honest and passionate feedback in discussions that helped to clarify and refine the scope of the exhibition. This book could also not have been realized
without the generosity of talented and insightful writers whose contributions are
worth far more than we could offer in return. I also sincerely appreciate the work
of graphic designer Rebecca McKinney for her work bringing this project together in its present book form so that it may have a fruitful life long after the exhibition closes its doors.
ABOUTTHEGALLERY The Earl & Virginia Green Art Gallery presents a program of rotating
contemporary art exhibitions on the campus of Biola University. Located in the
greater Los Angeles area, the Green Art Gallery is well positioned to represent
a vital Christian worldview within the critical dialogue of contemporary visual art and to produce engaging exhibitions that grapple with issues concerning the intersection of faith with art and culture. The Green Art Gallery also provides
professional development opportunities for Biola art students through gallery exhibitions and internships.
For more information please visit www.Biola.edu/ArtGallery
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