Nonfinito: MFA Exhibition Catalog

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NONFINITO 18-24 April 2017 Lina Bessonova Andrew G. Gatti Chanel Jami Hackett Leon T. Jones April Whoiwon Moon Meaghan C. Sweeney Meredith Taylor

SENSUS - Luoghi per l’Arte Contemporanea Viale Gramsci 42, Florence, Italy info@sensusstorage.com

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Forward Steven Brittan, SACI President

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When is an artwork truly finished? What signifies the moment of completion and how does one identify the importance of artistic discovery along the way?

The title of the exhibition, Nonfinito, appropriately conveys a momentary suspension with the promise of continuity. It marks a temporary halt in art-making as an important milestone for our graduating SACI artists.

This concentrated period of study is a stepping stone towards expertise, partially gained from following instruction, but also from breaking rules to define one’s own path. This is a time of experimentation through trial and error, for meeting obstacles and inventing ways around them. In this sense, even failure can be understood to be a pathway on the journey to success.

Renaissance Florence provides an abundance of unfinished artworks in varying stages of completion; in some cases, drawings transitioning to paintings were considered unfinished, yet perfect, the moment the artists lifted their paintbrushes. This condition of layering, continuity, history, and transience in Florence has had a profound impact on art.

Our SACI artists’ works are rich and diverse in content, methodology, and medium in various stages of completion. We are proud to pause for this moment and celebrate their remarkable breakthroughs and achievements.

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Introduction Filipe Rocha da Silva, MFA in Studio Art Program Director Romeo Di Loreto, MFA in Photography Program Co-Director Jacopo Santini, MFA in Photography Program Co-Director

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NONFINITO (UNFINISHED) Nonfinito comes from Italian, but has a universal meaning when applied to art. Great artists often express the infinite by giving an unfinished look to sections of their artwork. The meanings, in turn, are constantly reevaluated and altered by successive generations.

Nonfinito relates to the concept of sprezzatura, or “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it,” described by Baldassare Castiglione in Il Libro del Cortigiano (XVI century), a text that contributed to the definition of the Renaissance individual.

This inherent practice follows the instincts of the artist. Whatever technique and materials he/she is using, the sprezzatura – the Nonfinito – spreads throughout the work as can be seen in this exhibition. It is never finished because in a sense it is infinite; it has no end. Only that which is Nonfinito can be improved or benefit from the immense privilege of being able to change or even contradict itself, to be free and to express the artist’s freedom.

The art student must learn, study, and grow tremendously to achieve this apparent disregard of the rules of scholarly knowledge, but when a work is successful, the public experiences apparent spontaneity and compelling individuality. We believe the artists in this exhibition have reached this level of self-sufficiency in their career; like the artwork in Castiglione’s paradigm, their work now follows their intentions and speaks for itself.

Nonfinito is also a metaphor for another situation: the artists represented in this exhibition have just completed the MFA program, an important step in their careers that constitutes a beginning and opens a new set of possibilities for both the art and the artists. For Michelangelo, a single block of stone contained all possibilities inherent in a work of art. From now on, life, for our students, will be like this block of stone.

We are proud to present the exhibition Nonfinito, a collaboration between Studio Arts College International MFA Students and SENSUS Luoghi per l’Arte Contemporanea.

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Artists

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Lina Bessonova MFA in Photography

The project is a discovery of meaning and value of the everydayness, of objects and episodes being both mundane and metaphoric, torn out of the world and made into independent substantial entities, forming a place where one’s heart and mind are at rest - a home.

Lina is a Russian-born photographer with a background in PR and Media Communications, analog image-making being her biggest passion. Playing with light when catching moods, moments and life fragments on film and drawing with light on paper in the darkroom is her most personal way to share the surrounding emotional revelations. www.linabessonova.com

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Lina Bessonova At Home, silver gelatin prints on fiber-based paper, 30 x 40 cm, print 26 x 26 cm (10 x 10�), 2017

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Andrew G. Gatti MFA in Photography

The project culminated in a selfpublished artist’s book which captures the artist’s fragmentary memories. Moments stolen from travels across Western Europe as well as time spent in New York.

Through a restless search for a personal vision, he brings the viewers on a sideways journey through the looking glass.

Andrew Gabriel Gatti was born on August 20th, 1992 in Denver, Colorado in the U.S.A. and has been practicing and creating art for the better part of his life­–photography, printmaking and painting being his primary mediums.

He takes objets trouvés and drags the potential out of them through a surrealist approach at dissociating reality from itself. The unreliable narrator is an apt metaphor for this doppleganger approach to the depiction of the world which cages all of us. He often plays with dichotomies such as the contrast of nature and man-made matter. Much of the work involves the abstraction of basic geometric forms and ambiguous imagery.

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Andrew G. Gatti Untitled, digital inkjet prints on fiber-based paper, 2017

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Chanel Jami Hackett MFA in Studio Art

The number of murders committed by the police in America is at an all-time high. According to research, there have been approximately 1,000 deaths in 2015-2016 alone. And yet there is still no change or justice.

Inspired by the song Strange Fruit

by Billie Holiday, Hooded Fruit was created to lament the astonishing number of victims and force spectators to walk among them.

Chanel Jami Hacket, an American artist, received her BFA at Barry University in Miami, Florida, before pursuing her MFA at Studio Arts College International in Florence.

Her work focuses on the history and lives of Blacks in America, and her primary concern as an artist is to address the social, political, and economic inequalities within all cultures in our world today.

American trees bear strange fruit Red on the leaves and yellow at the root Black hoodies swinging in the ghetto breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

The hanging, yellow strings are the roots of the fruit. The 1,000 apples represent the number of lives taken.

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Chanel Jami Hackett Hooded Fruit Top left, bottom left, and above: Jute strings and apples (installation), 5 x 8 x 3 m, 2017

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Leon T. Jones MFA in Photography

Obedience disguised as comfort and normality is conformity.

I am not a submissive artist.

- Leon Jones

Leon Jones’ works are based in photography, but use the image as an object, vessel, and/or a relational trigger. Coupled with other traditional mediums, the photograph takes on an alternate role as a record of time and the temporal, engaging concepts rooted in the human condition and its struggle with nature.

The artist uses the process of making 2D and installation works to encrust objects with the inevitable traces of time, burdens of human engrossment, and refined decay in order to mine optic questions and challenge conformity. The work is meant to create struggle between viewer’s inherent perception and visceral reaction.

Leon Jones is a visual artist from the USA whose work has been shown internationally throughout the past 7 years. He earned his BFA (Photography) from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2013, a Post-Baccalaureate degree from SACI in 2014, and an MFA in Photography from SACI in 2017.

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Leon T. Jones Untitled “(So you wanna be starting something)” Image created from the archive collection of Leon T. Jones, USA circa 1940’s, photography, 2017

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April Whoiwon Moon MFA in Studio Art

April Moon’s work ventures into ideas of ephemerality by capturing living moments, simultaneously celebrating the presence of time and lamenting its passage. Afraid of forgetting but also afraid of being forgotten, Moon interrogates our life-long confrontation with mortality by dashing into the digital realm, which began as an almost compulsive resistance to becoming an absentee in her own life. Everywhere yet invisible, the sketchiest fragments of a moment become a set of meditations and a memoir of illusion within reality that revolve around an absent center.

April Whoiwon Moon earned a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) in Visual Arts from University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Drawing and Painting from OCAD University. She has participated in group shows in Canada and Italy. www.aprilmoonart.com

Her recent practice offers a reflection on contemporary philosophy, following the revivifying insights of Baudrillard, Barthes and Foucault on the topics of surveillance, sovereignty, and subjectivity spread across the media, and evokes these widely resonant truths.

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April Whoiwon Moon Mapping the Flow of Time and Navigating the Illusion of Reality Top: You Are Here,performance (photo documentation), 2015 Bottom: Serano, selfie stick on RC car, wig, LED, 2017 Right: Public Memory, spray paint on plastic, 110 x 160 cm, 2016

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Meaghan C. Sweeney MFA in Studio Art

Focusing on both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of subprime lending and foreclosures, 8640 in Two Parts refers to the recent United States 2008 financial crisis and subsequent bank bailout.

Meaghan Sweeney earned her BA from Hamline University in 2012. Her most recent exhibitions include VACANCY at Residenza d’Epoca in Florence, Italy, and How Many Steps to Reach You? at Rooberoo Mansion in Tehran, Iran.

In Part I, through the meditative, repetitive, and deliberate method of hand embroidery, the artist presents a series of maps, graphs, and statistical data references.

Sweeney’s practice layers photography, video, audio, and installation with the more classical mediums of painting, sewing, and drawing. Her projects seek to question personal identity while addressing contemporary culture - often through themes of memory, loss, and recovery.

In Part II, the artist turns from the historical collective to singular experience through the interpretation of loss.

This installation describes displacement brought on by a corrupt banking system, layering sound and video with large-scale paintings.

www.meaghansweeneyarts.com

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Meaghan C. Sweeney 8640: Part I / Part II Left top and bottom (Part II): oil on canvas with sound & video projection (6:37�), variable dimensions. Above (Part I): mixed media on linen, 2017.

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Meredith Taylor MFA in Studio Art

Meredith Taylor’s work focuses on the psychology of dreaming and the emotional content of nightmares. The dissolving bodies and the cast body parts signify both the sense of physical disembodiment of sleep and dreaming and the nonsensical plot lines of dreams. The work emotes the tangible, emotional residue that dreams leave behind after one wakes – in this case a largely autobiographical experience, as the artist often experiences vivid and sometimes lucid dream patterns. These themes are expressed using oil painting and sculpture, through a process that reflects the artist’s interest in Italian art history.

Meredith Taylor is an American artist born and raised in Georgia.

Her interest in Italian art and culture began in high school, and she has traveled to Italy numerous times throughout her education.

Meredith completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia with a dual major in Studio Art and Art History. She then interned in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York before returning to Italy to enroll in SACI’s MFA in Studio Art program. www.meredithtaylorart.com

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Meredith Taylor Top: The Dream,oil on canvas, 126.5 x 70 cm, 2016 Bottom: Dream Work in Progress, plaster cast faces, 318 x 67 cm, 2017 Right: Repose, oil on canvas, 133 x 76 cm, 2017

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Studio Arts College International Master of Fine Art Programs

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SACI’s community of MFA students works in a creative environment of rigorous critical and technical inquiry utilizing the unique artistic and cultural resources of Florence, Italy to prepare students for careers as artists and college instructors. For a duration of two years, students live and work in the city that, during the Renaissance, revolutionized art and has since served as an inspiration and catalyst for generations of artists.

By exploiting fully the advantages available to emerging artists through advanced study in Florence, SACI MFA students can become highly competitive when seeking an artistic professional career and university level teaching positions. Throughout their lives, they will be able to realize work reflecting their unique experience and deep understanding of Italian art and the nature of the artist’s role in society.

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SENSUS Luoghi per l’Arte Contemporanea

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SENSUS - Luoghi per l’Arte Contemporanea, founded by Claudio Cosma, art collector since the 1980s, opened in 2012 as an exhibition space where emerging and established contemporary artists can share their creative world, in an alternative environment outside of the usual gallery or museum “box.” In Florence, located at Viale Gramsci 42, between Piazzale Donatello and Piazza Beccaria, SENSUS offers over 400 square meters of installation space, and is costituted by a foundation with artistic direction by the collector himself and a board of directors. www.sensusstorage.com

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EXHIBITION This catalog is published in conjunction with the exhibition NONFINITO at SENSUS - Luoghi per l’Arte Contemporanea, Viale Gramsci 42, Florence, Italy, from the 18-24th of April 2017. The exhibition features the final projects of graduating students in the MFA in Studio Art and MFA in Photography programs at Studio Arts College International (SACI) in Florence, Italy.

TEXTS BY Steven Brittan (SACI President), Filipe Rocha da Silva (Director, MFA in Studio Art), Romeo Di Loreto and Jacopo Santini (Co-Directors, MFA in Photography) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dejan Atanackovic, Tommaso Bernabei, Alessandra Capodacqua, Lorenzo Colloreta, Giancarlo D’Emilio, Marco Fallani, Tina Fallani, Daria Filardo, Massimo Francalanci, Pietro Gaglianò, Brianna Hayes, Roberta Lapucci, Francesco Lauretta, Gary Lissa, Lisa Nocentini, Antonio Manta, Roberta Mazzotti, Lucia Minunno, Lorenzo Pezzatini, Hana Sackler, Tommaso Tanini, George Tatge, John Taylor, and Justin Thompson EXHIBITION TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE Luca Carosi GRAPHIC DESIGN / COVER DESIGN Naomi Muirhead / April Whoiwon Moon PHOTO CREDITS Jacopo Santini and the artists COPY EDITING David Davidson and Christina Gednalske PRINTED BY Litografia I.P. - Florence, Italy Studio Arts College International Palazzo dei Cartelloni Via Sant’Antonino, 11 50123 Florence, Italy info@saci-florence.edu www.saci-florence.edu Copyright © 2017 Studio Arts College International, SACI Press. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 9788885495005