VISUAL STUDIES 2011 M.F.A. & M.A. GRADUATES
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
The University at Buffalo was once the very leading edge of the American Academy, the Berkeley of the east, famed for its radical faculty, innovative avant garde culture and the extraordinary wattage such a home for cultural dissidents threw off. It counted among its faculty numerous people who came to define their fields, people such as Leslie Fiedler, Michel Foucault, Morton Feldman, Robert Creeley and Hollis Frampton. It attracted artists like John Cage to residencies. Sadly UB is no longer that place, winnowed down by draconian budget cuts, New York State’s repeated divestiture in education, and the declining fortunes of Western New York as a whole. Now UB is a solid mid ranked research university in a very cold city about 7 hours drive from New York. If UB is to return to glory, it will have to do what UB once did so well—innovate, make a home for radicals, up-end standard practices, violate accepted wisdom. And now it will have to do this with less resources, amidst a culture less inclined to validate experimentation, resistance and radical political thought than was the norm in the 60s and early 70s. But UB’s Fiedler once said that he stayed at Buffalo, despite numerous offer from better funded, more established universities precisely because it was preferable to work from the margins in, rather than the center out. The American university as a whole has itself lost its way since UB’s heyday, in some measure because it has exchanged an investment in the self-criticizing margins of American life for a far cozier relationship with that which it once judged, weighed, and evaluated. Increasingly, education is instrumentalized as a tool of industry, valuable as a mechanism of jobs creation, as if the only way to win support for higher education is to rope it to the very politics and system it has so often, and so powerfully, critiqued. Many private universities are now so in thrall to big donor and big money that they distance themselves from dissident social and political ideas, fearful of a backlash among alumni. The market, in short, has entered the academic realm and muted its once most strident critics.
We’re poor, but we’re largely free of such constraints. It’s now time to, like Fiedler, turn our marginality to a strength and define ourselves against this safe, vetted, instrumentalized education. It’s time to re-imagine this university as it once was, as an agent of social equity, a site for self-critical imagination, a motor of social change.
If nothing else, our new doctoral program will take a stand, and encourage our students to do likewise. The way forward is to look back to a time when this university led, not followed, the culture it worked so hard to understand.
Thus, setting up a new Doctoral program in Visual Studies amidst economic downturn and slashed state education budgets is foolhardy—and vitally necessary. Today, there is an almost seamless cross-pollination among art galleries, auction houses, art magazines, art museums, and art scholars. Not only do scholars write about the same artists being promoted commercially and in museums exhibitions, but they engage these artists in the same market friendly terms. Questions of meaning, of political import, languish in favor of a far safer anatomy of signification—we now prefer to talk about how a work of art means over what it means.
JONATHAN D. KATZ DIRECTOR VISUAL STUDIES DOCTORAL PROGRAM UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SUNY
Through its making, from start to finish, this catalog documents and celebrates of a spirit of collaboration and community that has formed among this group of bright, generous and gifted artists and scholars over the course of the past two years. Although it cannot fully reveal the thought processes, the shifts and developments that make the graduate school experience such an exciting and important endeavor, I hope it will provide a sense of closure to a credential in the context of its making, and mark a transitional moment in a lifelong intellectual and creative practice. Over the course of two very short and intense years, each M.F.A. and M.A. student in this class of 2011 have honed in upon and developed an original area of creative research and/or scholarship that is both intriguing and significant. All have informed their practice in a meaningful way through conceptual and multidisciplinary methods. Collectively and individually, these projects are an expression of where these artists / scholars are now and herald great promise for their futures.
ADELE HENDERSON DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDY DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SUNY
Our graduating MA and MFA students exemplify the interdisciplinary drive and spirit of the Department of Visual Studies. This document records the artwork and critical writing of graduate students in the Department of Visual Studies studio art and art history programs. As importantly, it is a tribute to the energy, focus and vision of these graduates. In this third ambitious manifestation of what is now an annual collaborative production, begun in 2008/9, they have nimbly managed to fold in art practice, history and theory, shunning the traditionally delineated lines between academic scholarship and studio practice, between the department’s Art History program and its Art program.
As we prepare to launch our first year of the Ph.D. in Visual Studies program, and cultivate growing pedagogical relationships with the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in New York City and with the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, the economic crisis deepens for the nation, the state and the university, and we in the department are increasingly forced to do more with less. Still, I take heart in the capacity of those students and faculty dedicated to persevering, pushing boundaries, challenging, insisting, and even thriving in difficult times. These students have dynamically changed the culture of the department with their lively intellectual exchanges, rich production, and feverish energy.
The Department of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo unites the disciplines of art, art history and theory. Visual Studies is a growing academic discipline that seeks to explore and critique contemporary visual culture within a global context and in multiple locations and media like art, design, film, digital practices, mass culture, science and technology. It represents a paradigmatic shift in the education of artists, designers, art historians, theorists and curators by recognizing the need for a theorization of visuality that re-defines the scope of art and material culture, including the investigation of territories beyond visibility. Practicing artists are expected to cultivate the relationship of research, theory and history to their work, and, concurrently, historians, theorists and curators are compelled to engage multiple visual platforms and environments beyond the traditional discourse of art.
This dynamo group of M.F.A. and M.A. students constitutes one of the most intense and brilliant collisions/collusions of minds that I’ve had the privilege of working with in my 12 years at UB. As they part ways with one another, we as faculty feel great sadness to see them go, but are fully assured that they will do us proud as associates circulating out in the world at large, spreading the cultural wealth.
Visual Studies is a new intellectual project for hyper-linked media and image saturated 21st century cultural producers and “visual” scholars. The historical meanings, cognitive processes and material manipulations of how images convey cultural meaning and, indeed, affect the human condition, are explored throughout the range of programs in the department.
MILLIE CHEN CHAIR DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SUNY
APRIL 2011
JONATHAN BARCAN THINGS FRAGMENT, THINGS MERGE
REVIEW BY: MEREDITH NORTH
Jonathan Barcan perceives the world as an interconnected system of unique experiences. In his painting and prints, Barcan explores the interchanges between our singular lives and a greater system of significance. These ruminations mirror the interdependent systems of the earth; while the moon is caught in the gravitational pull of the earth, its gravity drives the ebb and flow of the earth’s tides. Oceans are designated as geographically separate, but they form one continuous body of water. Similarly, contemporary society is a fluid web of connections that leave indelible traces on the systems of our existence. In reaction to every situation, we reform our positions and the consequences of our encounters merge the past, present, and future. Through his expressive figuration, Barcan’s work manifests the transformative process of human interactions. His Master of Fine Arts thesis show, Things Fragment, Things Merge, is the culmination of extensive work and reflection on the substances that formulate our lived experience.
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SUPERVENIENCE, (STATE 4) (DETAIL) 18”x 18” ETCHING 2010
PENDULUM #1 OIL ON CANVAS 2011
a systematic connection to the anatomical matter that composes not only our bodies but also the world around us. The fusion of the inner psyche and scientific inquiry is a central theme in many of Barcan’s works. For instance, the series On Forward Momentum uses the repetition of a figure to ruminate on the effects of thermodynamics, atomic succession, and the human figure. Using the same outline of a “human hurtling through the atomic space of resistance,” Barcan alters the environment and conditions in each successive image. In this series, Barcan explores the unique and transitory places in which humanity exists. These dreamlike spaces suggest the feeling of existing in two forms at once, as if one were experiencing the instantaneous time of the atomic fusion between two radical particles.
After arriving in Buffalo in August of 2008, Jonathan Barcan fully exerted his creative energy, driven by his background in printmaking and art history. In two years Barcan produced an abundant body of work that has exhibited in local and international shows. While working with traditional processes of printmaking, he began to experiment with unorthodox materials such as coffee, wine, enamel, and epoxy. The chance reactions in his experiments have lead to a distinctive incorporation of everyday materials beyond the use of ink and paint. Barcan facilitates rather than directs material interaction, “guiding them to behave how they are going to behave.” The chemical processes force him to shift and respond to constantly changing physical conditions. The physical limitations of the materials allow Barcan to act as meditator within the whole of the work. But critically, Barcan’s use of unconventional materials enhances the development of figuration central to many of his works. The combination of mixed media and formal paint techniques bestow expressive figures that immediately impact the viewer. His explorations pivot on the subliminal issues of humanity, civilization, disintegration, and reformation. Underlying the collective concern of existence, many of the works develop
Supervenient is a series of progressive etchings from the same zinc plate. In this current series, Barcan explores the direct connection of one state to another by altering the plate after each successive printing. The traces of previous states provide a foundation as they are simultaneously effaced. The dramatic change from one print to another shows how the manipulations alter our interpretation. Each state functions in a larger chain of interpretation when considered together. It is possible to discern various traces of each development, but seen separately, the prints take on an individual quality. Barcan builds upon the temporal and transitory conditions of printmaking by terminating the project only when the plate literally disintegrates. The prints mark the inevitable termination of systematic transformation. The systems of the earth are constantly adapting to various changes and influences. It goes without saying that human civilizations have irreparably changed the natural environment. The constant bombardment of objects, events, and encounters force us to continually shift our position in the world, and likewise we influence others in a cyclical transference. Though we may not be aware the fullest extent, we are creatures that constantly dismantle and reform our relationships according to our ever-changing surroundings. Jonathan Barcan’s work seeks to uncover the intersections of exchange that affect society. On an individual level, his work justifies the necessity for artistic creativity to shape the world of our existence.
Jonathan Barcan’s M.F.A. thesis exhibition THINGS FRAGMENT, THINGS MERGE was shown at the Anderson Gallery, April 2 - May 1, 2011.
50”x 38”
ON FORWARD MOMENTUM MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER 2010
HEATHER BRAND DÉJÀ VU OF THE PROTOCOL
REVIEW BY: OLGA ZAIKINA
Soon after Heather Brand first started working with photography, she observed that something always inevitably remained behind the photographic image, as if she was referring to Roland Barthes’ idea of a purely representational nature of the photographic image (Camera Lucida). What is left uncaptured by photography corresponds to an unspoken subtext of man’s everyday life—innermost desires, fears and intentions. These exclusions from externality are documented in what Brand calls “protocol” of the unspoken. In her Masters in Fine Arts thesis project, Brand combines elements of sculpture and photography. She applies melted wax on the surface of the images, which in certain places, transforms into large wax formations resembling both dripping stalagmites or growing stalactites. What remains unspoken (and amenable to photography), betrays itself by leaking into such formations, hidden from the light of everyday life in the darkness of the cave.
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55”x 30”
REACH (DETAIL) BEESWAX, PARAFFIN AND DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH 2011
JOINED (DETAIL) BEESWAX, PARAFFIN AND DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
2011
several measured stages. She slowly warms up the wax and applies it over a piece of silk by dipping the soft flexible fabric into melted wax and continually removing it. Next, the silk is covered with a layer of wax which cools and dries, gaining firmness and timelessness; capturing the irretrievable moment of the leaking away of the unspoken. The unspoken then, frightening in the beginning by its unknowingness, is brought out from the wild Dionysian cave to the light of day. Pure white paraffin wax, or yellowish smooth bees wax, both used by Brand, create magical and bizarre shapes, over which one’s glance pleasantly slides. Illusive and fragile (the wax structure remains easily breakable), a sterilized Apollonian veil saves the spectator’s eye from the trauma of the former unspoken bleedings. The order has turned upsidedown again—the return of the unsaid is manifested through its erasure.
Brand’s works are protocols, which manifest the return of the unsaid. What was left behind the photographic image now overlaps it, such as in Aspire. A wax formation dramatically grows out of the back of a girl’s head creating a vivid contrast between large empty space, a flat surface before her face, and a heavy sculptural arrangement behind her head. The wax formations, which stand for leaking or bleeding between the lines of everyday conversations, break up not only the capacity of her body, but also the limits of the canvas. Its return is boldly manifested in “over-materialized” forms, compensating for its ignorance in the beginning. The photographic image, then, goes under the wax layer, becoming blurred, physically inaccessible. Thus the unspoken reveals itself in hiding the visible. Moreover, in REACH the wax formations literally overlap the faces— where the most representational features of man appeared before. Disclosure of what was previously hidden is compensated by an awe-inspiring absence of the faces, gone into the abyss of the unspoken. Brand’s process of “extracting” transforms the unspoken into visible wax formations and entails
The interplay of the hidden and the revealed circulate in the series of Brand’s works, and creates a guiding thread for tracing it in the protocol. LEAKED documents the process. Brand puts on white t-shirts, through which blue ink comes forth. As it is used in commercials, blue ink represents a sterilized, idealized version of undesired liquids, which are intended to be concealed. Its representational nature is difficult to determine when the ink itself starts leaking through the repeatedly put-on t-shirts. When continuing registration through stubbornly putting on t-shirts becomes absurd, as her body is covered with them to the extent of painful and claustrophobic immobility, she decides to go back, desperately taking them off, hoping that the uncovering will return the blue ink and t-shirts to their initial nature. Instead, the more she uncovers, the darker the ink becomes and the more the white t-shirt soaks into the darkness of the ink, spilled now all over the surface of the t-shirts. Such uncovering attempts to return to the original representational nature of the blue ink, as if the backward process of taking away wax from the photographs might ever reset the representational nature of the photograph. Would it?
Heather Brand’s M.F.A. thesis exhibition EMERGE was shown at the CEPA Gallery, April 16 - May 14, 2011.
55”x 67”
EQUIVALENT (DETAIL) BEESWAX, PARAFFIN AND DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
2011
CARRIE FIRMAN THE ELUSIVE AND PLAYFUL NATURE OF SYNESTHESIA REVIEW BY: SARAH BRECKO
The experience and recognition of synesthesia has been in constant play between individual interiority and scientific study. Always a personal sensation, people who have synesthesia experience multiple senses that respond to the same trigger, creating various sensorial and emotional relationships that dominate perceptions and inner lives. These relationships developed out of instinctive reactions could potentially be what scientists need to better understand human existence; however the highly individualized experiences resist traditional scientific study. Since its discovery and waves of academic interest, synesthesia remains suspended in perpetual potential and continues to defy definition and complete understanding. It is this place artist Carrie Firman introduces her artwork, simultaneously presenting herself and her experiences with synesthesia to the broader synesthesia community and allowing others to engage in the same unique union of senses.
THAT WHICH CANNOT BE SAID WITH WORDS (INSTALLATION DETAIL) ARCHIVAL PRINTS OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS 2011
THAT WHICH CANNOT BE SAID WITH WORDS (INSTALLATION VIEW)
2011
Carrie’s synesthesia reacts to different sounds, giving her the sensorial perception of color, shapes and movement. Utilizing a wide range of methods and media, she seeks to engage the viewer with these experiences on multiple levels with stimulations in and in between sight, sound, and touch. With That Which Cannot Be Said with Words, she presents a visual depiction of the mind’s eye when a trigger arouses a synesthetic sensation. Known specifically as photisms, the blurry and swirling colors on the digital prints mimic the experience of colors and shapes triggered by a sound, smell, texture, or any other sense. While not hallucinations or products of an overactive imagination, these images that play with movement and color are an instinctive connection of multiple senses. They relate color with sound in the same way people associate smell and memory. In an attempt to extend these visual perceptions to the viewer, she asks them to consider typically unrelated senses in relationship to these images. What does a swirling red spiral taste like? What does a blurry golden light smell like? To build on these visual depictions and take the experience of synesthesia off of the gallery wall, she engages viewers tactically with Sound Blocks
based off of Form Constants and her own color and shape responses to sound. Viewers are invited to play and respond to sound in the same way she experiences it, by listening to music on headphones and interacting with hand-made blocks of various shapes and colors. By engaging viewers in multiple senses she creates an interactive experience that breaks the traditional barriers that separate the senses in non-synesthetic minds. She turns these experiences that appear to be manifestations of instability and the uncanny into a playful experience that has the potential to broaden humans’ interaction with the world around them and richly enhance interior life. This is especially true with her large installation Synexperience where viewers are placed into Carrie Firman’s shoes and experience the spontaneous nature of synesthesia; it is reliable, yet elusive and fleeting. Viewers enter into a dark room with motion detectors, and as they move around the space, the sonar sensors pick up their movements and initiate a projected animation on the wall of moving shapes and colors with an accompanying sound. Depending on the proximity of the viewer to the sonar sensors, the combination of sounds and animations changes, adding to the unexpected nature of synesthesia. These animations and sounds are quick and intangible, serving to momentarily disorient the viewer and raises questions of normative sensorial experience. As the viewer acclimates to the unexpected and fleeting combination of sound and color, the dark space allows the senses to extend and overlap in ways that mirror the daily experiences of people who have synesthesia. It is a unique melding of senses in a way that defies the viewer’s understanding of the role of the senses and how they function as mediators between the inner mind and the external world. With these works Carrie Firman seeks to defy the indefinable nature of synesthesia. Through her personal experiences and the inspiration of her individual synesthesia she takes it out of the realm of theory and illegible charts and graphs and makes it engaging and playful. These works bring to the forefront the inherent tangibility and sensual nature of synesthesia; while highly individual it is still about basic human nature and fosters forms of understanding.
Carrie C. Firman’s M.F.A. thesis exhibition SYNEXPERIENCE was shown at the CEPA Gallery, April 16 - May 14, 2011.
THAT WHICH CANNOT BE SAID WITH WORDS, NO. 1 (DETAIL)
16” x 20” ARCHIVAL PRINT OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH
SYNEXPERIENCE (INSTALLATION VIEW) PROCESSING CODE, ARDUINO CODE AND MICROCONTROLLERS, PING SONAR SENSORS, WOOD, CIRCUITRY, LEDS, MACBOOK, PROJECTOR 2010-2011
2010-2011
CAROLYN KASER SIGNAL/NOISE
REVIEW BY: ALESSIA BARZETTI
Images and information are a part of the daily experience in the 21st century. There is an information overload found in the daily newspapers, television broadcasts, and the availability of both of these media on the Internet. Carolyn Kaser examines these phenomena in SIGNAL/NOISE, where she asks how we can find our own place in a media overloaded world. Kaser draws from media sources to create layered images that present worlds of multitasking and compartmentalizing it. Kaser’s work is taken from daily drawings based on internet web searches, social media, nightly news broadcasts, and newspaper articles. While collecting these traces of popular media and current news events, she creates a ‘landscape’ of information, while revealing the trivial nature of the public’s interest in the publicity of the personal.
ALARM FATIGUE NUMBER 3 (DETAIL) PIGMENTED INK ON PAPER 2011
ALARM FATIGUE NUMBER 2 AND 3, (INSTALLATION VIEW) PIGMENTED INK ON PAPER 2011
In Kaser’s Alarm Fatigue 1, 2, and 3 she continued to compile images of news reporters, policy makers, and media, while listening and responding to instant and live breaking news. In Alarm Fatigue 1, live breaking decisions are made pertaining to the Japanese earthquake are relayed to viewers. In Alarm Fatigue 2, policy makers present information to viewers, and Alarm Fatigue 3, news media await for the instant information while avoiding radiation by wearing protective masks. From the instantaneity of the news, to the simultaneity of information received, Alarm Fatigue 1,2, and 3 embodies the instant image and telepresence of the noise generated by the national buzz.
Kaser focused her attention to recent events such as the Japanese earthquakes and the effects of radiation as well as the Egyptian Revolution, which generated interested in nightly news, RSS feeds, and daily newspapers. It is the noise generated by the many media outlets that Kaser was pointing out. With varying news reports, Kaser noticed that it was difficult to take a solid stance in order to discern the hard facts from the sensationalized hype. With all the viewpoints circulating, how does one find a middle ground? Kaser watched nightly news reports and drew images of news anchors and policy makers. In Policy Makers (Tuesday), Kaser focused on the featured politicians who are in action. Kaser traces several enlarged images overlapping each other, creating a compilation of single images, yet at the same time, one single image. This is similar to the many news reports of single events creating a noisy influx of information, just as politicians create noise vying for voters’ attention.
Carolyn Kaser’s M.F.A. thesis exhibition SIGNAL/NOISE was shown at the Anderson Gallery, April 2 - May 1, 2011.
As a part of her investigation of information overload, Kaser monitored and displayed her internet searches for a day. Kaser found the process of tracing the websites she visited quite meditative. Each website took a painstaking two hours, yet it only took her a small amount of time to access. Kaser described the process of tracing each website, “Like a monk working away in a scriptorium.” This process was done at a slower pace, compared to the live and instantaneous news reports. Kaser felt a reconnection between the hand and the mind when producing her internet website drawings. She became more aware of her screen time and more aware of the noise presented by her time spent in front of a screen, whether it was a television screen, or computer screen. During this project, Kaser found the experience isolating; for her, there was no face-to-face interaction, only the faces that were coming from “the box.” By publicizing her private internet searches, Kaser displays her personal interests. Kaser also noted the targeted advertising, which is happening more frequently on the Internet, especially Facebook. Something or someone is indeed watching you; you are no longer web browsing alone. In the 21st century it is important to be an informed citizen. This means spending time and concerning oneself with the news, decisions made by policy makers, and the Internet. However, how much time and to what extent does one need to spend with the national buzz? The more information one attains, the less one tends to know and becomes less aware of the noise.
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POLICY MAKERS [THURSDAY], (DETAIL) PIGMENTED INK ON PAPER 2010
JASON SEELEY COMFORT ZONES
REVIEW BY: ROKSANA FILIPOWSKA
“ Laboring through a world every day more stultified, which expected salvation in codes and governments, ever more willing to settle for suburban narratives and diminished payoffs – what are the chances of finding anyone else seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?” - Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day While the earliest humans depended on their instincts for survival, contemporary society offers specialized protection plans that include, but are not limited to: homeowner insurance, flood protection, health insurance, travel health insurance, life insurance, pet care, and insurance for any and all vehicles. The myth perpetrated by insurance advertisements is that obtaining each of these specialized protection plans guarantees the ultimate level of comfort and a freedom from having to worry about uncertainties.
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HUG (DETAIL) ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 2011
BREAKFAST TABLE (INSTALLATION VIEW)
84”x 96”x 60” WOOD, BARRELS, TABLE, CHAIRS, DISHWARE, FLOWERS
2010
Comfort Zones opens with a painting of a gerbil ball with a platform of lawn furniture: the remnant of the American Dream. This caged-in unit of shelter introduces the motif of the island as the metaphor for contemporary life where an individual exists as a nomad. According to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the postmodern experience of space is one of “deterritorialization” and nomadism; we are in perpetual motion through virtual and discursive landscapes of decontextualized relations. In Comfort Zones, Jason Seeley depicts the human figure as a nomad who struggles with the paradoxical concept of home as a shelter for survival and as a limitation of one’s capacity for mobility.
While we cannot protect ourselves against finitude, the “freedom” offered by civilized society comes with the monotony of paperwork and scheduled payments, as well as the imprisonment within our own psychological need for security. The comfort promised by civilization therefore, is not synonymous with freedom; according to the political philosopher Herbert Marcuse, “intensified progress seems to be bound up with intensified unfreedom.” Jason Seeley explores this false binary of freedom and imprisonment in the conceptually-driven Comfort Zones. Directly impacted by the Florida housing crisis of the late 2000’s, Seeley uses painting, sculptural installation, and video to examine the absurd obsession with security that is fetishized by American culture.
Working from photographs, Seeley paints hyperrealistic human figures that are juxtaposed against a stark, white background. This juxtaposition abstracts the figures and emphasizes the individual as a nomad constantly moving through decontextualized environments. Though the color white has been the favored display background in museum and gallery settings, due to its seeming neutrality, Seeley’s use of the color white allows the viewer to project his or her owns readings to “fill in” the context of the figures; the nomadic figures travel and exist within the readings of each viewer. While Comfort Zones offers a cultural critique of civilization as a subjugation of human instinct and articulates an experience of space that is characteristic of the postmodern condition, Seeley’s work is also highly personal. The figures that appear in the paintings are portraits of himself and his family; it is Seeley’s wife who stands armed with her children ready to take on whatever she is confronted with in Baby Boom. Like the dining table set for four that floats as an island in the video Breakfast Table, it is one’s clan of loved ones, rather than the physical structure of the home, that offers the paradoxically stable and portable sense of security that insurance is unable to provide.
Jason Seeley’s M.F.A. thesis exhibition COMFORT ZONES was shown at the CEPA Gallery, April 16 - May 14, 2011.
BABY BOOM
84”x 55” ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
2011
SHASTI O’LEARY-SOUDANT SEX TIME DECAY SHASTI
REVIEW BY: LAURA E. BRILL
Aging is universal; it is the natural process of life that begins the moment we are born and one which everyone must undergo. At the same time, culture influences the perception and perspective of aging. Certain cultures highly value aging, while Western society, on the contrary, places little esteem on it; instead, youth, beauty and money are of the highest values. In this way, time and appearance are the two central issues that are prevalent concerns in our society; they continuously work at odds against each other. Through large-scale photographs, sculpture and socially-charged performance, Shasti O’LearySoudant explores aging and the repercussions of vanity due to the great significance invested in the appearance of women.
SEX TIME DECAY SHASTI (INSTALLATION VIEW) INSTALLATION, PERFORMATIVE SCULPTURE, LARGE-SCALE PHOTOGRAPHS 2011
72”x 76”x 38”
TIME MACHINE / A THOUSAND CUTS (VIDEO STILL OF PERFORMANCE) PERFORMATIVE SCULPTURE, POWDER COATED STEEL, SPRINGS, GENTIAN VIOLET SURGICAL MARKERS 2011
To highlight the vulgarity in the process to prevent aging, O’Leary-Soudant utilizes gentian violet pens (which are used for marking the body before surgery), as sculptural mechanical objects in her performance pieces. O’Leary-Soudant’s series of performances include: “Porcupine”, “Time Machine / A Thousand Cuts” and lastly “Bed of Nails”, all of which are highly engaging performances that portray the demented ideas of how women deal with aging, specifically through the act of plastic surgery. The desire to remain ageless and “beautiful” in the eyes of Western culture comes at a painful price, both personally and culturally. SEX TIME DECAY SHASTI does not reflect the desire to hold on to youth in a negative light; rather, she diffuses the terror of the inevitable with acceptance and portrays aging with grace and honesty. SEX TIME DECAY SHASTI emphasizes the importance of interior appearance remaining true, though the exterior appearance will inevitably change. Speaking to vulnerability and self-protection, O’Leary-Soudant’s works in SEX TIME DECAY SHASTI target the time and beauty issues that face women, particularly after the age of forty, when a shift in lifestyle is experienced and women are forced to question their role in life due to changes in hormone levels. O’Leary-Soudant’s central focus addresses the approaches through which women cope with the inevitable and the extents to which women go to protect themselves against aging and time; these approaches are commonly violent, self-destructive acts. In SEX TIME DECAY SHASTI, O’Leary-Soudant explores extremely personal, yet universal ideas of femininity. In the “Gravity” series of 5 photographs, O’Leary-Soudant’s work takes a seemingly playful yet painful look at the effort to resist age. Employing an ironic approach through the use of large-scale 40 x 66 inch framed photographs, O’Leary-Soudant uses herself in contorted and obscured depictions, creating alterations with her own body. The “Gravity” series depicts tragedy and pain, yet pokes fun at the inevitable. In this way, her work employs humor, even though she is not making fun of the situation.
Shasti O’leary Soudant’s M.F.A. thesis exhibition SEX TIME DECAY SHASTI was shown at the Big Orbit Gallery, April 30 - June 5, 2011.
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GRAVITY I COLOR PHOTOGRAPH, ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINT
2011
ALESSIA BARZETTI B.A. MCMASTER UNIVERSITY, 2009 M.A. UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, 2011
SARAH BRECKO B.F.A. KANSAS CITY ART INSTITUTE, 2009 M.A. UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, 2011
Alessia Barzetti received her B.A. from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario Canada, where she majored in Classics and History. Alessia is earning her M.A. in Art History and a Museum Studies Certificate. During her time at UB Alessia served as the secretary and treasurer of the Visual Studies Graduate Student Association. She is interested in the depiction of gender and sexuality in Ancient Greek art, especially vase painting. Alessia has interned at the University at Buffalo’s Anderson Gallery and the Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University. Alessia hopes to obtain her Ph.D. in Art History or work at an educational museum. Alessia would like to congratulate all her fellow VS graduates and wishes them the best in their future endeavors.
Sarah Brecko was born and raised in Aurora, Colorado. She moved to Kansas City in 2005 to attend college at the Kansas City Art Institute to study art history and printmaking. Her research focuses on the graphic arts during the late 19th and early 20th century in Germany, where utilizing her training as a printmaker, she seeks to shift academic discourse from the subject matter and typical “isms” of that era to consider the historical implications of craft in printmaking.
THESIS ABSTRACT My M.A. thesis focuses on Athenian vase painting, specifically depictions of women working with wool at various stages. In Ancient Greece, wool work was women’s work, as this task took place within the women’s quarters of the home, the gynaikonitis. Wool work was the skill that all dutiful and virtuous women possessed as it was the archetypal duty of ancient women. This tradition was documented by Homer in the Odyssey, with Penelope who waited for her husband, Odysseus to return from the Trojan War. During her lengthy wait Penelope was pursued by several suitors, however, Penelope stayed loyal to Odysseus. She occupied her time at her loom, where she spun wool. It is her loyalty to her craft, which led to her loyalty to her husband. Penelope is the prime example of why wool work was a virtuous skill for women in antiquity. Athenian wives followed Penelope in their marriages. However, it was not only noble women working with wool who were depicted on vases; the hetairai, or better described as prostitutes, also took on this virtuous and noble task. My thesis investigates why this phenomenon occurs on Attic vase painting.
THESIS ABSTRACT After the unification of Germany under the mantle of the Prussian monarchy in 1871, citizens and public figures alike struggled to construct a cohesive and inclusive national identity; such a traditionally diverse population clashed against the Protestant and Prussian dominated government. These conflicts spilled over into realizing a national artistic style that would visually define the newly unified Reich, causing artists and critics to rail against the “external” and “internal” enemies that threatened this fragile new nation. Within this debate Max Klinger completely usurped these issues centered on the Fine Arts and offered a return to the simple mastery of craft via the original artist print. Printmaking and the original artist print specifically is a national point of pride due the legacy of Dürer; over time, however, it had been neglected by German artists. In choosing to create etchings and advocating for printmaking to be recognized as an acceptable Fine Art, Klinger presented a visual form of German unity in memory of its Renaissance legacy. Thus, this simultaneous footing within contemporary modernity and traditional ideals of craft and culture placed Klinger far ahead of his contemporaries, and as he developed his mastery of skill and solidified his ideas, successfully looked forward to the turn of the century to inspire the next generation of artists that shifted artistic affluence from France to Germany.
OLGA ZAIKINA B.A. THE URAL STATE UNIVERSITY, ART HISTORY MAJOR, DIPLOMA WITH HONORS M.A. FULBRIGHT GRANT FOR MASTER’S PROGRAM IN ART HISTORY, SUNY AT BUFFALO Olga Zaikina graduated with her B.A. in Art History from The Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, Russia; and came to the University at Buffalo as a Fulbright Scholar and earned her Master of Arts degree in Art History. Her research interests include issues of mourning and origin in Russian artists exiled to America after World War II and during the Cold War. THESIS ABSTRACT The sphere of my interests had originally been the art of Russian immigration in America, specifically in New York City in the first half of the 20th century. My research for M.A. thesis focuses on three artists —Arshile Gorky, Marc Rothko, and John Graham— who emigrated from the territories of Russian Empire in 1910s. The main causes behind their immigrations—whether the Armenian genocide or Anti-Semitism—left an indelible mark on each of their lives. I look to emphasize immigration as a tragic loss of roots and examine it through the notion of memory, mourning, Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy and Rousseou’s nostalgia. Insecurities over self-identity in exile led these painters to search for means of preservation and recreation of an “original” self, which I examine through Derrida’s notion of origin and erasure. Arshile Gorky’s How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life is one of the best indications of the double function of memory: on the one hand, it influences present existence, on the other, recollections themselves, as a source for imagination, are constantly being shaped by present wishes and anxieties. In analyses of their art I refer to Mnemosine as goddess of memory and mother of Muses and oppose it to Nietzsche’s joyful forgetting. By doing so, I argue that only memory creates conditions for art, and, like tragedy, provides language to speak about catastrophe.
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO M.A. CANDIDATES 2011
HEATHER BRAND B.A. STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, COLLEGE AT BROCKPORT, 2008
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO M.F.A. CANDIDATES 2011 CARRIE KASER P.T.P. TAMARIND INSTITUTE, 2009 B.F.A. UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, 2004 Carrie Kaser grew up on the Western Slope of the Colorado Rockies and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, University of New Mexico, and Tamarind Institute before moving to Buffalo. Her drawings, prints, and installations explore the construction of narrative and the interpretation of experience through images, objects, and memory.
Heather Brand was raised in Upstate New York and received a B.A. from the State University of New York College at Brockport in 2008, she is currently pursing her M.F.A. at the University of Buffalo. By means of video, photography and installation Heather’s work questions a human’s ability to function as a container and examines the moments in which attempts at containment becomes futile displays of ritual and leaking becomes inevitable.
JONATHAN BARCAN B.A. SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY, 2007
Carrie C. Firman was raised in south-central Pennsylvania. She studied commercial design and photography at Lycoming College and was a professional graphic artist before entering the M.F.A. program at UB. Her electronic, photographic, and installation work explores the experience of synesthesia.
Jonathan Barcan was born in 1980 in a stereotypical track-housing suburban sprawl 40 minutes north of Los Angeles. As soon as he was legal, he moved to San Francisco and immediately immersed himself in the vibrant underground creative scene there, where he helped to throw arts/music events in both institutional and unconventional art locations. He stayed there for over 10 years. Before coming to Buffalo, Jonathan earned a B.A. from San Francisco State University with a degree in Printmaking and Art History in 2007. Barcan has exhibited internationally, including shows in Oakland, San Francisco, Texas, Philadelphia, Montreal, Toronto and Florence, Italy.
JASON SEELEY B.F.A. RINGLING SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN, 2008
SHASTI O’LEARY-SOUDANT B.F.A. STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, PURCHASE COLLEGE, 1991
Jason Seeley grew up in the suburbs of Boston MA. He received his B.F.A. from Ringling School of Art and Design in 2008, and is currently pursuing his M.F.A. at the University at Buffalo. His paintings, sculptures, and installations explore the psychological nuances between freedom and imprisonment within a culture driven by ownership and security.
Before Buffalo, Shasti O’Leary Soudant was an itinerant professional dilettante who was born in New York City and spent way too much time there. She has attempted to counteract that by briefly living everywhere else. She’s been a professional graphic designer and photographer for the last nineteen years, has one child, one spouse, one business and no pets. In her art practice, she employs a wide range of media, including photography, performance, sculpture, video, film, music, graphic design and engineering to explore and interrogate vanity, aging, sexuality and the ways in which we edit the self in reaction to culture, politics and emotion.
CARRIE C. FIRMAN B.A. LYCOMING COLLEGE, 2005
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO M.A. CANDIDATES 2012 MEREDITH NORTH Meredith North is in her first year of the Master of Arts program at the University at Buffalo. Her interests in Art History include Dada, European (German) Modernism, and Postwar European and American painting and sculpture. Currently, she is examining Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse’s impact on Postwar European and American art.
LAURA BRILL Laura E. Brill is in her first year of the Master of Arts program at the University at Buffalo. Her Art History concentration is in Modern Art and Museum Studies. She completed her B.A. at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York with a double major in Fine Arts and Anthropology. Upon graduation, she would like to pursue a museum career.
CARISSA NICHOLSON Carissa Nicholson is in her first year of the Master of Arts program at the University at Buffalo. Her research interests include Bronze Age Archaeology in the Aegean and Mediterranean world, Classical Art and History, and the history of scholarship. She is currently working with the multidisciplinary group the Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology (IEMA) at UB.
ROKSANA FILIOPWSKA Roksana Filipowska is in her first year of the Master of Arts program at the University at Buffalo, researching topics in Postwar European and American visual culture. Her interests include the role that the Berlin Wall played on communication between Eastern Europe and the West, the intersection of critical theory and practice, and the role of performance under communism.
Š 2011 UNiVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SUNY This publication was made possible through the support of the University at Buffalo Department of Visual Studies, Sub-Board I, Inc., and the Visual Studies Graduate Student Association. All topics and themes discussed in this text do not represent Sub-Board ,I Inc.
DESIGN: CHRISTOPHER FOX (M.F.A. 2012) Christopher Fox is in his first year of the Master of Fine Arts program at the University at Buffalo. His work focuses on experimental typography, repurposed materials and structures, and the combination of tactile process, written content and performance elements to create engaging experiences and environments.
ESSAY COORDINATOR: SARAH BRECKO
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