COCKTAIL PARTY EFFECT
EmbarkGallery.com | Fort Mason Center | 2 Marina Blvd. Bldg B, Ste 330. SF, CA 94123
COCKTAIL PARTY EFFECT 05.13.16-06.11.16
UC Davis Art Studio MFA Program Department of Art and Art History 2nd Year Thesis Preview
Sarah Chan Zach Clark Anna Davidson Kristin Hough Jeff Mayry Julian Tan Brett Alex Thomas Angela Willetts
Coined by cognitive scientist Colin Cherry in 1953, the “Cocktail Party Effect” describes the filtering out of a multitude of sounds in order to focus on a particular conversation. It involves turning in to a single voice and detecting objects of importance, while tuning out visual and auditory clutter. Like the viewing of artwork, it works best when one is“hearing with both ears,” letting the senses fully activate in engagement with the object. Over the last two years, each artist represented in the following exhibition has collected and processed ideas and materials, listening for that singular voice amid the din. They have arrived at a place unique to their research. The work you see here is the culmination and distillation of that process, presented through painting, performance, installation, video, sculpture and printmaking.
The Master of Fine Arts Degree in Art Studio, established in 1969, is a two year, critically engaged studio program that provides an opportunity for interdisciplinary study in the visual arts. As part of a small tight knit community, students explore a wide range of media and approaches to studio practice. Current faculty members include Shiva Ahmadi, Tom Bills, Darrin Martin, Hearne Pardee, Lucy Puls, Annabeth Rosen, Young Suh, Robin Hill, Tim Hyde and Gina Werfel.
About the UC Davis Art Studio M.F.A. Program
Students explore a wide range of media and approaches to studio practice. Drawing on the strengths of a multidisciplinary research campus, the program encourages research collaborations connecting the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. The program is committed to delivering an innovative educational curriculum that promotes the blending of art theory and creative practice, with a goal to prepare students for professional engagement in the arts, including but not exclusive to academic careers. We aim to advance theories, methods, tools, and knowledge in emerging areas of studio art practice.
Sarah Chan “I align myself with the fluidity of consciousness; shifting from thought to thought, dream statesand parallel realities. There is potential in the forgotten moments and endless expanses hiddenbeyond our field of perception. Familiar and unknowable, the potential of these moments bringforth delight and serendipity when yielding to experience of the everyday, the mundane and the lonesome.�
Feet a Kura-Kama, 2015. Video installation.
Feet a Kura-Kama, 2015. Video stills.
“My video work engages with subject matter that is at once a spectacle and a cipher, echoingthroughout an event, between visual and psychological space. In a quiet voice, it whispers softly a desire to connect with y-o-u.�
Zach Clark “There are stories all around us. You were somewhere before you got here and you passed countless others along the way. This building hasn’t always stood here and the floor beneath you is almost certainly not the dirt from the ground. We’re all part of an abundant collective history and I’m inspired to consider it. Communication and collaboration are key interests in my practice. Desires to learn more about and facilitate other creative’s practices has been the catalyst for cooperative collage books, letterpress text pieces referencing quotes and literature, and the release of multiple volumes of free digital publications. Conversations on visits to locals farms and wineries have inspired drawings and screen printed artists books. Similarly, encountering new locations has been a constant in my life. Beginning with countless road trips to visit family while growing up, later to years as a touring musician, travel has become necessary for expanding my work today.
Gorale, 2016. 48 page full color risographed book with letterpress covers. Edition of 50.
Nova Urbeto, 2015. Letterpress on paper. Edition of 6. 12x18”.
Whether focused on people or places, I’m working to wrap my head around the circumstances that define our contexts. Through the stories I collect and tell, I’m asking the viewer to recollect and reconsider their own.”
Anna Davidson
“As a biological researcher, both artistic and scientific, I’m interested in how physical environmental factors work in sync with genetics, resulting in unique morphologies, anatomy and physiology of species, mostly within the plant and fungal kingdoms. I use life forms as artistic media to comment on their phenomenal nature, bring intrigue to the species at hand, and illustrate the diversity of life. I propose the following questions: How does human manipulation of life impact the viewer’s perception of themselves as a species and the organisms involved? Will working with living media with relation to their environment call the viewer’s attention to environmental fragility? How does human manipulation of the natural environment affect the function, structure, and aesthetics that each species displays?”
Search for Life. Potato dextrose agar, fungus, polyurethane, wood, paint.
Kristin Hough “The quickness of a gestural hand reactivates what starts as a still image. As the history of the making is never hidden, my paintings strive to hold a tension between minimalism and chaosgesso, pencil, organic material, latex, enamel and oil paint, and other collaged items are all allowed to sit on the same surface. A level of un-finish questions the successes and failures of painting in general while still being seduced by paint’s lusciousness. This allows the image to hover between the awkward and the composed.�
Foray #3, 2016. Oil on Yupo
Foray #2, 2016, Oil on Yupo
Jeff Mayry
“I seek to create environments that might become structures of consciousness and moments of experience. In order to produce unexpected results, my work is the summation of repeated acts that are often illogical and senseless to become moments where forms affect forms in a vulnerable, pure and un-manipulated state.
These nameless images become vital and very much alive and, because of this, express a paradox that is comprised of human weakness and existential beauty.”
Work in progress at the artist’s studio, 2016.
Installation view at Embark Gallery, 2016.
Julian Tan “As an artist, I have found that “sense” is easily taken for granted and sensations fancied. Analysis, creativity, and open-mindedness aren’t the tools for some kind of quest for ideological truth or emotional validation. Rather, it’s a responsibility I have set for myself to be a conduit for the truths around me. This battle cannoy be won with language, but perhaps seeing and hearing art can aid us to stop and see the reality we ignore so often. Negotiating the creation, archiving, and exhibiting of these thoughtful moments within the high volume of informational intake today have led to choices made in mark making and subject matter - reflecting the thoughts and experiences thus far in my life. Piecing these connections together like puzzle pieces with sides that change, manipulations present opportunities to give my work a life - renderings impossible to duplicatye. The faith and skepticicm I have welcomes unpredictable resolutions for my future as an artist.”
Mostly Red, 2016. Acrylic on Canvas
Dark Scribble on Green Field, 2016. Acrylic on canvas.
Brett Alex Thomas
“Memory is a strange thing. On occasion it keeps us reeling amongst the intensities of the past. Scientists now believe that our memories are re-written every time we recall them. To this end, I am most fascinated by the interplay of my recollections, the meaning of truth within them and how they synthesize through the organic craft manifest that is my studio practice and skill set. In an ever flowing stream of craft that is stylistically subject to the idiosyncratic conditioning of my life memory, I create sculpture. I believe that my hands and skill are the vessal that is my expression and that I alone possess the capability to construct, reconstruct and deconstruct both metaphysically and physically my world, story and self. My identity is the root of my being both in temperament and conditioning and I am proud of who I am.�
Memory Node #42 - Untitled, 2016. Mixed media.
Angela Willetts
“My work exists somewhere between video, performance, sculpture and painting/drawing. I proceed without a plan, using video, drawing or painting to record and observe the emergence of a relationship between myself and a material. It is a moment of unapologetic materiality, at times humorous, at other times intimate, uncomfortable, frustrating or perplexing. Through the work I investigate my understanding of self as matter and my relationship to other matter in the world. The transformation of a substance as my body interacts with it, and its transformation of me, encourages co-emergence; each activating the other. Surprised by what unfolds as I touch and respond, I find myself in unfamiliar dialogue with familiar matter. With an increasingly digital and isolated experience of life (and art), the sense of touch, of encountering a physical other, is vital to my practice.�
Landscape & Portrait, 2016. Paper installation and video documentation of performance.
Embark Gallery offers exhibition opportunities to graduate students of the Fine Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. We provide a space for an engaged community of artists, curators and scholars, and aim to expand the audience for up and coming contemporary art.
TANIA HOUTZAGER | Executive Director ANGELICA JARDINI | Curatorial Director