INTERSECTIONS 2019
TYLE R SCHOOL OF ART TE M PLE U N IVE R SITY
D I L M A R M . G A M E R O S A N TO S
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INTERSECTIONS
TYLER SCHOOL OF ART
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TEMPLE INTERSECTIONS 2019 UNIVERSITY TYLE R SCHOOL OF ART
F O R E WO R D BY S U S A N E . CA H A N , D E A N
TE M PLE U N IVE R SITY
D I L M A R M . G A M E R O S A N TO S
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I N T E R S E CT I O N S I S A N I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A RY C O L L A B O R AT I O N , P R O D U C E D BY T H E 2 0 1 9 M AST E R O F F I N E A R TS CA N D I DAT E S I N PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H T H E G R A D UAT E ST U D E N TS A N D FAC U LT Y O F T H E D E PA R T M E N T O F A R T H I STO RY AT T H E T Y L E R S C H O O L O F A R T, T E M P L E U N I V E R S I T Y.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ADMINISTRATION
GRADUATE FACULTY
Chad D. Curtis
Mariola Alvarez Stephen Anderson Kate Benisek Steven Berkowitz Philip P. Betancourt Gerard F. Brown Douglas Bucci Susan E. Cahan William J. Cohen Tracy E. Cooper Chad D. Curtis Jeffrey Doshna Linda Earle
Associate Dean, Graduate Director and Associate Professor of Ceramics
Kati Gegenheimer
Associate Director of Academic Enrichment Programs and Painting Faculty
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Sasha Eisenman Amze J. Emmons ˘ Ford Seher Erdogan Clifton R. Fordham Jane DeRose Evans Mark Thomas Gibson Philip Glahn Abby Ryan Guido Marcia B. Hall Sally W. Harrison Jesse Harrod David Herman, Jr. Kelly A. Holohan
Richard D. Hricko Pauline Hurley-Kurtz Renee E. Jackson C.T. Jasper Jessica Julius Gabriel Kaprielian Dawn Kasper Lisa Kay Nichola Kinch Stephanie Knopp Robert T. Kuper Baldev S. Lamba Scott R. Laserow
Courtney Leonard Roberto Lugo Dermot MacCormack Martha Madigan Lynn A. Mandarano Christopher McAdams Pablo Meninato Rebecca Michaels Leah Modigliani Susan M. Moore Dona R. Nelson Rashida Ng Emily Neumeier
Odili Odita Karyn Olivier Michael Olszewski Sharyn A. O’Mara Eric Oskey Pepón Osorio Erin Pauwels Vojislav Ristic Fauzia Sadiq Garcia Bryan Martin Satalino Matthew Sepielli Paul E. Sheriff Mark Shetabi
Robert Z. Shuman Jr. Gerald D. Silk Samantha Simpson Hester Stinnett Kim D. Strommen Lolly Tai James Thomas Ashley West Mallory Weston M. Katherine Wingert-Playdon Andrew Wit Byron Wolfe William Yalowitz
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CONTENTS
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F O R E WO R D A R T I STS A N D E S S AYS C O N T R I B U T I N G AU T H O R S
ARTISTS
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ARIN ASHLEY MARISSA BAGLEY YANGSHAN CHOU ANTHONY COPLAN LAURA FRANCIS LAUREN FUEYO DILMAR M. GAMERO SANTOS KRISTIN HINKLEY NOAH HUBER CAMERON JARVIS ALEXANDER KIRILLOV KATHERINE LAM YEBIN LEE MAREN LESS ANNE LUKINS JOSHUA MCGOWAN DAN MIRER JAE EUN PARK TEDDY PONEMAN NOÉL PUÉLLO JINO RAHIMI KATHERINE REULHBACH KAT RICHARDS ELIZABETH CLAIRE ROSE NETTA SADOVSKY RACHEL STURINO HALL
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WR ITE R
SCU LPTU R E
F I B E R S & M AT E R I A L ST U D I E S
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PA I N T I N G P H OTO G R A P H Y
M E TA LS / J E W E L RY / CA D - CA M
PR I NTMAKI NG
G R A P H I C A R TS & I N T E R ACT I V E D E S I G N
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G L AS S
CE RAM ICS
WR ITE R S
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G IOVAN NA B E LLETTI E R E
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M ICHAE L CAR ROLL
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KR ISTI NA CE NTOR E
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MAR K CLAES
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PAIG E HOWARTH
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TARA KAU FMAN
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E M MA C. ROB E RTS
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M ICHAE L LALLY
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ALI PR I NTZ
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NOAH RAN DOLPH
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E R I N R I LEY-LOPE Z
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E M MY SCHOLLE N B E RG E R
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J ESSICA STE R N BACH
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J ESSE R H IAN-YU SU LLIVAN
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H UA (E LLE N) Z HANG
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CONTE NTS
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FOREWORD
BY
S U S A N E . CA H A N
The Tyler School of Art of Temple University is delighted to celebrate the work of its 2019 MFA class in this publication, a collaboration between Tyler’s graduate students in studio art and its continuing students in our Art History graduate programs. This collaboration has been a Tyler tradition since 2012.
The project that brought these artists and writers together has made an indelible impact on everyone involved, a permanent bond between each pair of students, and a tremendously exciting document of what will in the future be considered “early work” by all contributors.
As an art historian who has worked with dozens of artists over the past 30 years, I can attest to the terror one can feel when writing about the work of a living artist. As a writer, you must navigate a narrow pathway between confidence in your own interpretation and fear of judgement by the artist, who might not agree that you’ve fully grasped their work.
I would like to thank our faculty advisors for providing guidance and encouragement: Mariola Alvarez, assistant professor of art history; Chad D. Curtis, associate professor of ceramics, associate dean and graduate director; and Philip Glahn, associate professor of critical studies and aesthetics. For her skillful and creative management of this project, I am grateful to Kati Gegenheimer, associate director of academic enrichment programs and a faculty member in painting. I would also like to express my appreciation to Olivia Menta and Zachary Vickers for their editorial contributions.
Likewise, when artists release their work into the world, they know that viewers will bring their own perspectives and find their own meaning—that is part of the joy of art. But it can also be nerve-wracking, as artists want their work to be understood.
Thank you to the graduate student leaders whose vision shaped this endeavor: Lauren Fueyo, MFA candidate in sculpture; Joshua McGowan, MFA candidate in photography; and Erin Riley-Lopez, PhD candidate in art history. And, most importantly, thank you and congratulations to all of the students whose work is presented here. Susan E. Cahan Dean, Tyler School of Art
FOR EWOR D
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ARIN ASHLEY W R I T T E N BY
E R I N R I L E Y- LO P E Z
The myth of the second sex, to borrow Simone de Beauvoir’s phrase, is that women are the weaker of the two, prone to hysteria and generally less intelligent, among other suppositions; which have been circulating in global discourses for centuries. Arin Ashley dismantles these myths, rethinking the dominant, patriarchal narrative of how women have historically been viewed by showing they are much more powerful and capable. In her large-scale, room-size installation many works converge to narrate a very personal history using the life-cycle as metaphor. As Ashley notes in her artist statement, women’s bodies are often not their own and “belong” in some way to others. Often simultaneously, women labor—in partnerships, in childbirth, and in work—as they also nurture—their partners, their children, their extended families. Quilts, a rocking chair, a pillow, a crib, scars and wounds appear in the work and become signifiers of both the labor and nurturing women provide to the world. The viewer will begin their journey to the left of the room, moving clockwise, and encounter a range of different life experiences: birth, menstruation, loss of virginity, assault, pregnancy, labor, motherhood and death. The work representing both birth and death is at the center of the room represented in the shape of a pillow of a solid, nearly 40-pound kiln-formed glass casting of the artist's belly with the visibly stapled caesarean section scar that sits on a cushion covered in quilts made by the artist’s paternal grandmother and great-grandmother. All the other installations radiate out from there linked to one another with an umbilical cord-like braided rug, made from plastic
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grocery bags. Deflated balloons have been stitched together to form a quilt—the seams of which resemble scarring—that is draped over the side of a crib. A broken window with a ripped curtain implies the trauma of bodily assault. Cast plaster molds of Ashley’s hands holding glass breast cups offer this body part to the viewer, as another example of the way women’s bodies are consumed. Fragments of glass, held together with dark golden colored thread, referencing pus, speak to the female body being stitched back together after birth and sent home wounded and still healing. A small Queen Anne style rocking chair may serve as the foundation for a sewing performance by the artist, recalling those done by 1970s feminist artists who, like Ashley, were working through their place in the world as women, partners and mothers. Each individual work is part of the larger installation and narrative, which intentionally connects the female body to the home as a site of loss and consumption of self. Louise Bourgeois’ early feminist drawing Femme Maison (Woman House) (c. 1947), illustrates this idea as a woman’s body morphs into, and at the same time, is taken over by a house. One question Ashley seems to grapple with continuously throughout this work is how to break the cycle of perceived gender roles in society while still maintaining a sense of oneself in the world
AR I N ASH LEY
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Without Self
Solid glass casting, large cushion and handmade quilts (made by the artist’s grandmother Nadine Ashley and her great grandmother Cora Huff). Approx. 72" x 42" x 42". (PREVIOUS PAGE)
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(ABOVE) Bra and underwear belonging to the artist, wood, clothesline rope, cement. Dimensions variable.
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Postpartum (RIGHT) Lace, expired breast milk donated to the artist by mothers living in her neighborhood, breast milk was generated by their own bodies then pumped or expressed with generosity, love and care, raw sugar, craft glue. Approx. 44" x 32".
Wallpaper (BELOW) Digital print. 2' x 4'.
AR I N ASH LEY
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MARISSA BAGLEY W R I T T E N BY
G I OVA N N A B E L L E T T I E R E
Marissa Bagley is a second-year MFA student working in the Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM Department. Like most students within the world of academia, Bagley faces a hectic schedule filled with deadlines and projects along with the question of, “What do you plan to do come graduation? How will your work make a difference within your field?� Marissa handles the stress and anxiety of the everyday student realm with her jewelry making. While the world outside of her studio may always be in flux, the way in which she carries herself within the artistic world is based on consistency and structure. The standards for her art are grounded in meticulous approaches. She produces a variety of jewelry based on the theories of repetition. According to Bagley, her methods are based in recurrence, mirroring systems and repetition of line and form. Ever since her undergraduate career in metals, her pieces have consisted of mirror patterns in order to transform asymmetrical objects and materials into symmetrical forms. Bagley often combines versatile materials such as plastic, resin and metal. Through the combination of materials, her works demonstrate a playfulness of flexibility and solidity. Bagley offsets these materials with repeated shapes and forms that come together with a design of purpose and unity.
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Bagley responds to the materials and does not stop working with a piece until it achieves her standards. The artist considers herself to be a perfectionist as she often makes many adjustments before the product is finalized. Bagley ideally sees herself in the fashion world as her jewelry complements those within the high fashion world. While Bagley has engaged her pieces in photoshoots for her own portfolio, she does not let anyone, even close friends or family members, wear her jewelry. As metal work eases the stresses of everyday life, they also feed her need to feel in control. By keeping her pieces secluded, she also practices control over their adaptability. Generally, her pieces include strong lines and geometric shapes. Overall, she finds symmetry between two forms satisfying and comforting
reflect 3D printed resin, acrylic, sterling silver. 8" x 8".
WHILE THE WORLD OUTSIDE OF HER STUDIO MAY ALWAYS BE IN FLUX, THE WAY IN WHICH SHE CARRIES HERSELF WITHIN THE ARTISTIC WORLD IS BASED ON CONSISTENCY AND STRUCTURE
MAR ISSA BAG LEY
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Transference 3D printed resin, epoxy resin, sterling silver. 8" x 8". MAR ISSA BAG LEY
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YANGSHAN CHOU W R I T T E N BY
H UA ( E L L E N ) Z H A N G
YangShan Chou regards herself as an experimental designer. She loves experimenting with new things and enjoys the process of making more than the resulting outcome. Through her current focus on projects grounded in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), Chou gives graphic design a new definition by creating more interactive and user-friendly experiences. With AR and VR applied to her work, people can explore a unique artistic world and beyond. Chou received her first master’s degree in illustration in Taiwan. Most of her early work is derived from her personal experiences, such as stories with her friends, memories of her hometown and living as an international student in America. Her early experiences as an illustrator help her to develop her design work. For example, her branding project, Yes, we do!, a pastry box packaging design created for Taiwanese weddings, utilizes her abilities to combine her stylized, narrative illustrations with traditional (yet playful) Taiwanese packaging concepts. Her work embodies her connection to Asian culture, but also demonstrates her ambition: to jump out of Asian traditions and challenge herself. Chou’s recent work more explicitly engages the themes of cultural exchange, environmental issues and community development. A function of her interests in working with technology through multidisciplinary approaches, these projects have led Chou to collaborate with students in other majors throughout Temple University. For example, in the process
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of making Arduino Air Aware, a smart mask that can detect polluted air, the designer worked with two architecture and engineering students. She has also studied coding to complete the mask. More importantly, as Chou later told me, “The mask is only a start. I am still experimenting and improving it,” a statement that suggests her interests in extending her design concepts as she tries new things passionately. Simultaneously, Chou’s work is both personal and emotional, rational and systematic. Going forward, Chou has said she would like to work in laboratories where she can continue to experiment and create new things for people. In her self-portraits, she uses defined lines and white and black, highly contrasting colors, to show a girl sinking into the darkness of the ocean. These self-portraits are titled Calmness and Fear—terms that explain the complexity of her psychological world and gives the audience a sense of unknown and mystery. It is probably because of this quality that makes Chou’s passions for trying new things, experimentation and self-exploration in all of her work
Yes, we do! Wood box. 4" x 8" x 8". YA N G S H A N C H O U
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SIMULTANEOUSLY, CHOU’S WORK IS BOTH PERSONAL AND EMOTIONAL, RATIONAL AND SYSTEMATIC.
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Arduino Air Aware (ABOVE) 3D print, Arduino, Adafruit’s CCS811, mask. Dimensions varaible. Photo credit: Zachary Hawk. Premier Esports Blueprint (RIGHT) Video. Transplant (OPPOSITE PAGE)
App design.
YA N G S H A N C H O U
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ANTHONY COPLAN W R I T T E N BY
E R I N R I L E Y- LO P E Z
The creative impulse can at times be an isolating and lonely venture, one prone to fits and starts, criticism and praise, insecurity and confidence, among other swinging pendulums of experience. Anthony Coplan works through this creative process in the form of the graphic novel using a variety of materials including acrylic, graphite, ballpoint pen on canvas, muslin and linen. The character who populates this story is an antihero—the everyday man who struggles against the larger world. Each painting is dated and reads like a journal entry, making the scene personal to the artist as well. When viewed together, the scenes do not resemble a linear narrative and instead move in and across time. What the scenes do share is a common theme of the endurance and labor needed to make it as an artist. The antihero character has transitioned from a soldier in the U.S. Army to that of an artist in school. A transition that cannot be easy as one moves from a collective unit fighting on behalf of your country to a more solitary lifestyle laboring in the studio. One canvas—dated November 27, 2018, Day 23—portrays this transition with the character sitting atop an airplane, his middle finger pointed at the skyline as he thinks, “The thing I would tell people about ETSing (getting out) that I was going to fly under the radar & ride off into the sunset.” The line work is minimal and colorless with more detailed drawing coming from the tattoos on the character’s arm. As a viewer, we are not privy to how this transition took place, but that it has happened, as evidenced by the fact that other works focus on the character in art school. Another scene shows the character in front of a blank canvas, this
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time holding a TNT candle—a clue to his military service—lit at both ends while another, larger one is suspended behind him. The setting in this painting takes place in the studio based on the canvas propped up on buckets and the character sitting on a rolling stool. There are more gestural marks in this work as the light from the candle creates shadows of the figure and canvas and in this case highlights the ever present, hovering nature of deadline-based work. Curiously, the date has been scribbled over as has part of the thought bubble text. The visible text reads, “Burning… both ends…you…may not like the results,” which leaves the viewer questioning both time and context. Coplan joins the tradition of visual artists who use the graphic novel format and alter ego as a method of working through issues, which are often personal. The structure of the graphic novel—although here somewhat deconstructed in that Coplan is not working with a book form—lends itself well to interior monologue and automatic writing. In Coplan’s work, however, the redaction of text, disjointed narrative and seriality of imagery—the same scene appears in multiple variations—illustrates the fragmented sense of self in transitioning from one major life experience to another
Where Boys Are Made Into Men (ABOVE AND DETAIL BELOW)
Oil and acrylic on polyester blend dropcloth. 9' x 12'. ANTHONY COPLAN
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IN COPLAN’S WORK, HOWEVER, THE REDACTION OF TEXT, DISJOINTED NARRATIVE, AND SERIALITY OF IMAGERY—THE SAME SCENE APPEARS IN MULTIPLE VARIATIONS—ILLUSTRATES THE FRAGMENTED SENSE OF SELF IN TRANSITIONING FROM ONE MAJOR LIFE EXPERIENCE TO ANOTHER.
Ain't Shit Change Sharpie, acrylic paint on drop cloth. 38" x 96".
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Big Man On Campus (DETAIL ABOVE) Non-photo blue on 160 gm bianco Fabriano paper. 5' x 8'.
ANTHONY COPLAN
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LAURA FRANCIS W R I T T E N BY
ALI PR I NTZ
Artist Laura Francis investigates the experience of letting go with her ongoing video project, Please send me evenings and weekends. Three separate video feeds combine and translate banal activities into a self-portrait of the artist in her daily life, carrying out the same actions that mirror our own everyday existence, such as exercising, mending possessions, sitting on the sofa, washing produce bags and recycling. With a soundtrack reminiscent of times gone by, the audio is vaguely suggestive of a comfortable 1950s sitcom, yet simultaneously repetitive and varied as the video feeds bleed together amongst the mundane activities in a release of energy. Further enriching the work is the title’s oblique and possible reference to Return the Gift, a 1979 song by the British post-punk band Gang Of Four, known for their leftist political concerns and critique of consumerist culture. The complication of letting go—of objects, ideas, consumption and social constructs—is difficult to capture, yet Francis has done so in each of the three video feeds from the conception of the idea of energy, to its mending and resistance, and to its eventual release in material form. She is conscious of her own impact and careful to confine her own individual message and practice, as expanding the message universally creates a new message, one that takes the viewer away from the mundane. We are meant to relate to the process of letting go on a personal level, be conscious of it and in turn “let it go,” which is heightened by monochromatic lo-fi iPhone video footage, creating haphazard angles which add to the personal dimension and scale of the message.
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Please send me evenings and weekends highlights the fragile relationship between individual energy and social constructs and their ritualistic nature to one another. Francis has created a piece that carries a sense of duality on many levels, most blatantly the comfort/discomfort and voyeuristic nature of watching her perform daily activities, which give the illusion of intimacy because of their familiarity. Perhaps the tension is unintentional but valuable in its execution and success. Much like Martha Rosler and other artists who drew from the theories of a 1960s second-wave feminist movement in an effort to change women’s place in society, Francis uses mundane action to highlight the importance of letting go, breaking the cycle of consumption and our place as a hindrance or advance in a world compromised by throwaway culture, pushed away from the comfort of previous decades. There is a poetic futility to these actions—as well as a privilege in the time required to attempt maintaining such behavior and adapt private actions to current social and environmental circumstances. While committed to these attempts, it seems Francis asks, can symbolic gestures lead to change or merely exist as the manifestations of private coping?
Please send me evenings and weekends (still) Video, audio. 7:24. LAU RA FRANCIS
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Please send me evenings and weekends (still) Video, audio. 7:24.
LAU RA FRANCIS
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LAUREN FUEYO W R I T T E N BY
E M M A C . R O B E R TS
Sunday, 10 a.m. Very little of the floor’s cement peeks through the debris in Lauren Fueyo’s studio. The first thing I spot is a scattered deck of playing cards. After offering to make us coffee, Fueyo remembers that she left her beans in the adjacent studio of her friend and collaborator, artist Jino Rahimi (102). Along with fellow MFA peers Anne Lukins (78) and Netta Sadovsky (120), Fueyo and Rahimi—all second-year graduate students enrolled in Tyler's Sculpture Program—have formed a close kinship and working relationship, one reflected in the blurred authorial lines that connect their thesis shows. After Fueyo sends her a message, Rahimi brings in the beans, along with some camera equipment that Fueyo will use later that day to finish shooting a murder mystery, cast with human-sized paper dolls. Speaking about the exasperation and humor that accompanies the act of waiting, Fueyo cites Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, coincidentally echoing the comedic situation I experienced minutes before while waiting for her to gather supplies from Rahimi and prepare for our conversation. Throughout, Fueyo talks about Buster Keaton’s physical comedy—a series of left-right, up-down actions, designed to test the edges and conventions of the cinematic screen— as she moves through each corner of the concrete floor. Fueyo’s video, Showtime (2018), finds the artist channeling Beckett and Keaton, as she prepares for an outdoor performance while waiting for her family to arrive. Pulling props
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out of a residential garage and warming up, the artist fills the screen with high knees and a partially out-of-frame threepoint shot (the basketball sails across the frame, passing several feet below the hoop). With her intended audience absent, Fueyo performs diligently for the camera for almost 25 minutes, at one point drumming out a Cat Stevens song on a gas can, as she holds on, hoping that her family will return before the sun sets. The tragicomedy ends as the sun goes down and the garage doors close, leaving Fueyo, inside, alone with her props. Back in her studio, Fueyo starts to explain the details of a card trick, then says it would be better if she just showed me. She begins to look for a deck of cards; no luck beyond the incomplete set that I noticed earlier strewn across the floor. She decides to look around one more time and finds a full set in her pocket, explaining that she doesn’t always keep them there. She then swings a step ladder around to perform the trick and continues to use it as a stage for her hands once the demonstration is over. Fueyo used this card trick in a recent series of performances where she assumed the role of a spiteful magician, flicking pebble-sized insults toward those who approached her. Embracing awkward but sincere attempts to participate, Fueyo asks, “How can I know what a magician knows unless I become a magician?” Fueyo’s curiosity guides her to take social risk, a risk that becomes more possible and infinite when leaning on the logic of comedy
LAU R E N F U EYO
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Magic is like Gambling (PREVIOUS PAGE) Performance with two decks of cards, coins, Slim Jims, scissors, Bubblicious gum and hand sanitizer. Photo credit: Kris Rumman.
Untitled (ABOVE) Mixed media. 1" x .25" x .25".
FUEYO’S CURIOSITY GUIDES HER TO TAKE SOCIAL RISK, A RISK THAT BECOMES MORE POSSIBLE AND INFINITE WHEN LEANING ON THE LOGIC OF COMEDY.
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Seven at a Table (ABOVE) Video. SHOWTIME (LEFT) Video.
LAU R E N F U EYO
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DILMAR M. GAMERO SANTOS W R I T T E N BY
ALI PR I NTZ
It is clear that the work of Dilmar Gamero is deeply humanitarian at its core, in search of the preservation and understanding of microcultures in the far reaches of the world. His most recent project, Mamacha Carmen, is a collaboration of culture and personal experience that resonates with the complicated colonial history of Peru, the timelessness of native tradition and the increasing globalization of our universe. Gamero shows his commitment to the culture and in turn, the culture to him, in a symbiotic relationship dependent upon the 300-year-old festival of the celebration of the Virgen del Carmen, known locally as Mamacha Carmen, patron saint of the mestizo, which takes place in the remote village of Paucartambo.
Gamero has constructed five demandas of his own experiences of the festival, highlighting his role as both an insider and outsider in Paucartambo, as well as to chronicle the events of the festival. Each box is a culmination of personal photographs, handicraft, documentary evidence, varied photographic techniques such as cyanotype and platinum palladium, technology and artifacts such as costume embroidery from the celebration—all highlighting the inclusion of a book specific to each day and celebration of the festival. Furthering the global nature of the Mamacha Carmen project is the multiplicity of language in each book, English, Spanish and the native Quechua, representative of colonial influence, native heritage and universality.
Gamero has spent the last 10 years of his life visiting the Peruvian Andes each July, serving as an eyewitness to Paucartambo’s annual festival, which honors the arrival and preservation of the sacred virgin after the onslaught of the Spanish invasion in the 16th century, when the Catholic religion was forced upon the indigenous. The Peruvian people lost many traditional cultural aspects after colonization, but through the careful construction of demandas, or spiritual religious boxes, accompanying dances and praying to the virgin Mamacha Carmen, they have managed to preserve their sense of community, craft and identity through the annual preparation and execution of the festival.
Despite the influence of technology and commodity, Paucartambo safeguards its traditions through the annual festival, practicing the same order of celebrations, using similar costuming and ornamentation and through the important visual storytelling techniques of dance, music and decoration. Their traditions will continue as long as they have a community and receptive audience, and Gamero will be present to record and participate in the legacy of the preservation of cultures. Through his complicated position as both an insider and outsider, as well as a caretaker of memory and place, Gamero reconstructs the narrative of Mamacha Carmen through a perfect meshing of the sacred, manifesting as a personal ritual of retelling and a chronicle of cultural preservation
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Mamacha Carmen y sus danzas (Mamacha Carmen and her dancers) Platinum / Palladium print. Print: 7" x 7"; Sheet: 11" x 11".
D I L M A R M . G A M E R O S A N TO S
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16 de Julio: Procesiรณn (July 16th: Procession) Archival ink jet print. 15" x 10".
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Qoyacha y Demanda (Qoyacha and Demanda) Archival ink jet print. 15" x 10".
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Qonoy: Bailando con Fuego (Qonoy: Dancing with Fire) Archival ink jet print. 15" x 10".
D I L M A R M . G A M E R O S A N TO S
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KRISTIN HINKLEY W R I T T E N BY
PA I G E H OWA R T H
The design work of Kristin Hinkley endeavors to attract the eye and influence the viewer. Drawn to design from a young age, she began designing logos before she was old enough to understand commercial art and remains obsessed with ideation. Therefore, it is no surprise that her passion for design stayed with her and influenced her ultimate career path. Hinkley’s deep interest in social justice often provides motivating form for her work. For example, one of her thesis projects includes materials for a social justice themed retreat titled Intersect. Here, she designed a visual language that is both inviting and informative in order to, as she states, “tackle a growing societal ‘bias’ that views the concept of social justice education as divisive.” Color features prominently throughout her work and Intersect is profoundly represented by overlapping shapes to reflect the concept of intersection. As the colors interact where they overlap, new shapes are formed to create an energetic design that guides the eye through the piece. She specifically sought colors that were friendly, bold and youthful to entice the eye but which also would be visually appealing when mixed together to visualize the idea of intersection. The social relevance demonstrated in Intersect allows Hinkley to help unite communities and promote a positive influence on their future.
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As a cross-disciplinary designer, she approaches her work with a methodological framework. Hinkley is a flexible artist who adapts her strategic processes as she designs, using her personality and easy-going attitude to guide her work ethic. As an adaptive design thinker she is as comfortable organizing strategic processes as she is designing. This approach allows her to conduct research-based problem solving to help craft and enhance a brand’s identifying story. Therefore, much of her work revolves around the social justice systems that is demonstrated by the educational materials within Intersect, as well as various other efforts in UI/UX and social impact design. Overall, Hinkley aspires to use her design skills to support an organization that aims toward a positive influence on society. In this way, she hopes her work can serve not only as a reflection of her own deeply held beliefs but also have the potential to affect real social change
Dwell LA Map and App Wood, metal, magnets, Epson Paper, app prototyped in Adobe XD. Photo credit: Sam Fritch.
KR ISTI N H I N KLEY
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Dwell LA Map and App Wood, metal, magnets, Epson Paper, app prototyped in Adobe XD. Photo credit: Sam Fritch. Intersect Social Justice Retreat (OPPOSITE AND NEXT PAGE)
Paper, vinyl, cotton, plastic buttons, printing by: Fireball Printing. Photo credit: Sam Fritch.
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KR ISTI N H I N KLEY
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NOAH HUBER W R I T T E N BY
E M I LY S C H O L L E N B E R G E R
Noah Huber’s brightly colored, irregularly shaped canvases project out from the wall; the width of each canvas varies so that its surface dips toward the wall. These undulating surfaces with their patterns of broken, choppy brushstrokes recall op art, confusing viewers with their refusal to lie flat and parallel to the walls on which they hang. In making these small paintings, Huber questions relationships between form and content, object and image, tactile and digital. The biomorphic shapes of the canvases disrupt the convention of painting as a window for displaying content, instead calling attention to each painting’s existence as an object. They also disrupt our day-to-day experience of looking at images on screens, in which the flat, rectangular screen functions as a supposedly transparent medium that transmits images. These paintings break away from uniform rectangles, instead calling attention to their organic
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outlines, undulating surfaces and textured brushstrokes. The brushstrokes themselves move in predominantly vertical or horizontal patterns, both suggesting shapes and functioning as a record of the artist’s gesture. Moreover, the patterns formed by the brushstrokes work in concert with the dimensional canvases to prevent the brushstrokes from resolving into an image. Instead, these elements remind viewers that each painting exists as a material object, as each canvas swells outward and bends in toward the wall. These tensions between material object and receivable content result in indeterminacy, letting viewers form their own associations with the colors and shapes that dance across the curved canvases. While the paintings open themselves to these associations, each operates according to its own internal logic, with problems of color and composition resolving within the organic boundaries of each canvas
Repeater Oil on canvas on shaped panel. 19" x 18" x 2".
NOAH H U B E R
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Funnel Oil on canvas on shaped panel. 15" x 14" x 1.5".
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Snailday
Oil on canvas on shaped panel. 18" x 18" x 3". (OPPOSITE PAGE)
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HUBER QUESTIONS RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FORM AND CONTENT, OBJECT AND IMAGE, TACTILE AND DIGITAL.
NOAH H U B E R
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CAMERON JARVIS W R I T T E N BY
TA R A K AU F M A N
When creating his concrete sculptures, Cameron Jarvis mixes and pours the material into wooden molds and when the mixture has set, he uses industrial paint to spray markings onto the concrete slabs akin to those utilized for construction sites. Arranged on the floor, the concrete slabs mimic the sidewalks that run alongside the streets of Philadelphia. In his studio, however, they are newly poured and free of the filth that has been ground into the city’s surfaces. Jarvis was raised in a suburban neighborhood in Minnesota but has recently relocated to the city of Philadelphia. The striking infrastructural differences between his two hometowns prompted him to question the social forces that drive urban neglect and upkeep. Jarvis considers how materials, such as concrete and wood, form our constructed environment through larger infrastructural trends, such as redlined neighborhoods and gentrification. Similarly, dirt, construction tape, relinquished art and discarded signage find their way into Jarvis’s studio as he considers the misfit objects and materials that comprise the stuff of everyday life. These easily overlooked objects can attest to both human practices and the cycles of growth and decay that objects themselves experience as they are produced, consumed, cast off as rubbish and then rearranged in the artist’s mediation of our material environment. As Jarvis reimagines the infrastructural histories of a city through his work, he suggests the potential to rebuild our environment in the tenuous, politically-charged moment in which we live.
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Jarvis’s American flag screen print series reveals these notions of political turmoil and possible action more explicitly. Here, the stars and stripes of this iconic national symbol are scattered in haphazard arrangements as if in disrepair, echoing the anxiety produced by the current presidential administration and its ignorance of our country’s continued history of oppression and racism. Jarvis’s flag series reminds one of Faith Ringgold’s painting American People Series #18: The Flag is Bleeding (1967), in which the egalitarian promise of the American flag is similarly questioned in light of the racial inequality and violence that permeates American culture. However, since Jarvis’s flag series was created 50 years after Ringgold’s, their similarity becomes a chilling reminder of the continued presence of racial violence in the United States. Nonetheless, Jarvis’s persistent manipulation of the flag’s symbolic form underscores the power of individual agency in generating creative and unexpected ways forward in these harrowing but transitory times
East Poplar Pool Oil and marking paint on canvas. 72" x 72". Photo credit: Alec Smith. Pour Out for Flint (BELOW) Concrete, marking paint, plastic bag and malt liquor. 22.5" x 46.5" x 13.5". Photo credit: Alec Smith.
CAM E RON JARVIS
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45 Installation; Open edition of 45 serigraphs on Arches cover white paper. 79" x 151" each print 15" x 15". Photo credit: Alec Smith. Slab (1x2)
Concrete, wood and marking paint. 25.5" x 49.5". Photo credit: Alec Smith.
(OPPOSITE PAGE)
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HE SUGGESTS THE POTENTIAL TO REBUILD OUR ENVIRONMENT IN THE TENUOUS, POLITICALLY-CHARGED MOMENT IN WHICH WE LIVE.
CAM E RON JARVIS
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ALEXANDER KIRILLOV W R I T T E N BY
N OA H R A N D O L P H
As first observed by Heraclitus, flux is the only constant of life. This is especially true for Alex Kirillov, whose life can be read as an exercise in transience: childhood in Russia, adolescence in Cincinnati, homeless youth in San Francisco, art student in Boston, traveler in Europe, professional training in Albuquerque, master printer and father in Philadelphia. Embedded in this constant change of scenery and exploration of the world is a fluidly adaptable artistic style and all-embracing exploration of media. While Kirillov’s prints as an undergraduate were markedly naturalistic, his time at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque and his training in lithography forced interaction and collaboration with different artists. These experiences informed new work that, using cubism as an analogy, aims to look at transition and movement not through varying points of view, but through diverse points in time. Though trained as a printmaker, the majority of Kirillov’s recent work is film. While the two media may seem disparate, the latent homologies become apparent when in conversation with Kirillov. Both are technical processes that involve the passage of time and layers, methods that he uses to examine impermanence, transience and flux through the metaphor of motion. These examinations are influenced by Georges Bataille’s meditations on order in “Architecture,” the first entry of the Dictionnaire Critique, as well as Michel
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Foucault’s discussions of the “Regulation of Movement” in his 1960 thesis Madness and Civilization. As explained by Foucault, movement has been used for centuries as a cure for melancholia and hypochondria, as simply passing through landscape was believed to correct the agitations of mania. Using video footage shot from windows of moving transport, sculptural elements, and layered sound, Kirillov investigates the concept of the “motion cure” that Foucault references. “Instead of place, I depict the expanse in between all places,” explains Kirillov. “Instead of time, I want the viewer to feel the transition that is the sum of our experience— the constant movement, the alternating velocity, from nowhere to nowhere.” In these videos, the repetitive obsessions that characterize melancholia are replaced with the repetitive order that obscures and alters the landscape and repetitions of sound. He continues these investigations by fixing a time-mapping grid to still footage of a profile, revealing the impossibility of stasis that also exists in the human body at rest. By using the order of the grid and the concept of the motion cure to actively disorient the viewer, Kirillov exposes the problematic aspects of self-identification through the specifics of time and space
View From 121 Points in Time (Ksenia) View From 121 Points in Time (Ksenia). HD Video. 15 minutes. A L E X K I R I L LOV
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Motion Cure HD Video. 60 minutes.
Melancholies I (300 seconds, night) (FOLLOWING PAGE) Archival Pigment Print on Felt. 24" x 36".
“INSTEAD OF TIME, I WANT THE VIEWER TO FEEL THE TRANSITION THAT IS THE SUM OF OUR EXPERIENCE—THE CONSTANT MOVEMENT, THE ALTERNATING VELOCITY, FROM NOWHERE TO NOWHERE.”
A L E X K I R I L LOV
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KATHERINE LAM W R I T T E N BY
N OA H R A N D O L P H
Katherine Lam came to the Tyler School of Art from Texas by way of Rome, where she spent her first year of graduate study. In Texas, Lam’s mixed media artwork focused more on the process of construction, where she had her own woodshop and routinely crafted and shaped her own panels and geometric structures. Working in new cities and new studios during the past two years, Lam was forced to distance herself from the process that her past work relied upon. Initially in Rome, she did not even have access to a hammer, forcing her to source found objects—marking a shift from pure construction to construction-through-deconstruction. Though technically a painter, Lam challenges the formal limitations of her designation with assemblages that invoke the sensibilities of neo-dada and minimalism. She forces the viewer to engage with each piece in a different way with variations in size, depth and placement. This element of Lam’s practice can be observed in the large and attention-demanding assemblage Monumental Trajectory, composed of everything from painter’s tape and chicken wire, to a five gallon bucket impaled by a mop. Underneath the bucket are two pieces of fabric covered in paint that spill out of the unwanted and recycled stretcher that the
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assemblage is arranged within, thereby encroaching on the viewers' space from the wall and upsetting the normative function of the stretcher bars. Along with exploring the phenomenological experience of the viewer, the compositions of Lam’s work respond to the contexts in which she is placed. In narrative, form and process, her work displays the necessity of adapting to ever shifting environments by combining the personal with the commonplace. Learning from her experience in Rome, the objects used in Lam’s work are sourced from her day-to-day travel—discarded things that are familiar to life as items of utility, from cardboard boxes to discarded car fenders. Lam takes these impersonal materials from one place and gives them new identity as objet d’art. Within the assemblages, Lam is careful not to “artify” the everyday, appreciating that the object has a history and provenance of its own. When combined with Lam’s extraordinary sense for composition, the resulting forms are simultaneously haunting and playful
Monumental Trajectory (ABOVE) Mixed media. 108" x 12" x 96". I Am Convinced (RIGHT) Wood, aluminum, plastic, mesh. 27" x 20".
K AT H E R I N E L A M
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Untitled (LEFT) Plastic, acrylic sheet, rope, pastel. 60" x 53". Stay In Your Lane Wood, foam board, plastic. 36" x 84" x 35". (ABOVE)
Some Sweet Fender Bender (BELOW) Plastic, tulle, metal, latex paint. 54" x 42".
K AT H E R I N E L A M
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YEBIN LEE W R I T T E N BY
M I C H A E L L A L LY
Yebin Lee embraces an inner transformation by translating her own experiences as an explorer and immigrant into three-dimensional objects. Throughout the necklaces, brooches, headpieces and jewelry that she makes, the artist’s drive is to reveal the narratives that the wearers of the pieces have shared with one another. Though Lee creates using her own experiences as motive, the wearer can truly be anyone, resulting in a viewing that allows similar yet personal revelations to emerge for both the viewer and the wearer. Created through Computer Aided Design, the pieces utilize both 3D printing and spray paint applied by hand. This process allows Lee to manipulate the works with a similar physicality to how a potter manipulates ceramics. The pieces themselves replicate the forms and motifs found in broken shells. This allusion to shells reflects the figurative shells that surround each individual. The partial state of the shells that are represented harken to the wearer breaking through the shells around them, to peel away layers of fears.
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The sweeping and curvilinear movements within the works mimic the wearer’s psychological transformation from the old to the new. For Lee, this transformation is the old environment of her home country of South Korea to the new country of the United States. The gold leaf on the pieces represents value and truthfulness, thereby highlighting the wearer’s inner worth, along with a sense of true personality. What one person believes about another might not necessarily be true. The artist uses this notion of false impressions in her pieces. For these works, the viewers must approach with a blank slate, and in doing so, their impressions start blank and emerge from this. This concept is recreated in the works through the white surrounding the gold. This white likewise represents the emptiness, pureness and colorlessness of the pieces
Deterioration Nylon and gold leaf. 3.5" x 3" x 1".
YEBIN LEE
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Peeling Away Nylon and gold leaf. 5" x 3" x 3".
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Reveal Nylon and gold leaf. 11" x 5" x 10".
YEBIN LEE
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MAREN LESS W R I T T E N BY
MAR K CLAES
Myth-making explains the Whys of our world. Without myths, mooring us to meaning, our lives can seem disjointed and adrift. Maren Less feels that mythology is missing from our culture, though she is not looking for a specific myth or mythic type. Through her delicate, anti-modernist, sculpture-collages Less compels her viewers to generate thought-provoking conversations about how something is missing in our lives. These conversations most excite Less about this work. To Less, her objects are continually in process and their placement and arrangement create multiple modes of interpretation. The tension between the objects in relation to themselves and to their viewers embodies a sense of movement, yet none of the pieces change their position.
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It is as if the ability of the objects to move has been suspended. Some of Less’s objects are characters but there is no narrative or intentional conclusion to be drawn from said character, which is somewhat reminiscent of her previous works that had an association with Beckett and the Theater of the Absurd. Less’s objects utilize a combination of fabric, spackle, cardboard, tape and recently, wheels from toys. As she constructs each piece the importance of not over-thinking is stressed which, to Less, would lead to the death of her experiments
MAREN LESS
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Truck Cardboard, fabric, paint, tape, collected wheels, mosaic tiles, papier-mache. 44" x 16" x 21".
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MotherBirther (RIGHT) Cardboard, fabric, paint, tape, fake fur. 22" x 18" x 17.5". Rocker
Cardboard, fabric, paint, tape, rocker from found rocking horse. 26" x 5" x 17".
(BELOW)
Horn Player
Cardboard, fabric, paint, tape. 22" x 30" x 22".
(FOLLOWING PAGE)
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MAREN LESS
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ANNE LUKINS W R I T T E N BY
K R I ST I N A C E N TO R E
To engage with Anne Lukins’s work is to be destabilized, caught up in a world of shifting identities. Lukins is an interdisciplinary artist, conducting investigations in performance, sculpture and puppetry. Yet, her primary artistic medium may be communication itself. Communication is a transformative act of exchange: For Lukins, it can simultaneously illuminate and alter the interpersonal relationships that shape an individual’s lived experience. She views this destabilization as a kind of therapy, though it may upset, anger or as the artist describes it, “antagonize” its subject. In this sense, conflict is of particular importance to Lukins, and is explored in the work Mutual Service Exercise. The work is a collaboration with fellow MFA candidate Netta Sadovsky, in which Lukins and Sadovsky set out to wrestle, to physically fight each other. A video piece featuring one iteration of their fighting, overlaid with dialogue between Lukins and Sadovsky, was recently displayed at Pilot Projects, a gallery in Philadelphia. As Lukins and Sadovsky discuss in the video, the two see Mutual Service Exercise as an investigation into the nature of close friendships. More specifically, the work interrogates what the artists see as implicit assumptions that structure friendships between white women, including their own. Lukins and Sadovsky are frequent interlocutors and their collaboration is built around their shared fascination with psychotherapeutic practices. During a residency last summer at the School of Making Thinking, Lukins and Sadovsky participated in a form of therapeutic practice orchestrated by one of the residency facilitators, known as psychodrama.
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Psychodrama is a tool designed to address unresolved trauma or challenges by bringing these experiences into the present moment. In some ways, a psychodrama has a theatrical quality and resembles a play or performance. The therapist acts in the role of the director, while the main participant becomes the central character, the protagonist of the action. Other participants in the psychodrama are cast into roles such as “the mother” or the “adulterous husband.” Lukins describes these enactments as illuminations of complex elements within interpersonal relationships that would otherwise remain latent. Such experiences inform a yet-to-be-named work in progress in Lukins’s and Sadovsky’s ongoing collaboration. Lukins and Sadovsky describe this project as a utilization of the methodology of the psychodrama in an investigation of racial and class-based privilege. As the descendants of relatively affluent white families, they explore the psychology of the artists’ relationships to the concept of money. Following the format of a psychodrama, the artists will take turns playing the role of director and the role of the protagonist, as well as casting others into additional roles. As the performance takes place, the participants will act in discussions of the ethical implications of their position in society. In “calculated interventions” such as these, Lukins seeks to excavate the nature of relationships, simultaneously bringing their potentially unrecognized aspects to the fore and imagining possibilities for a restructuring of their foundations
ANNE LUKINS
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COMMUNICATION IS A TRANSFORMATIVE ACT OF EXCHANGE: FOR LUKINS, IT CAN SIMULTANEOUSLY ILLUMINATE AND ALTER THE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS THAT SHAPE AN INDIVIDUAL’S LIVED EXPERIENCE.
Mutual Service Exercise (still) (PREVIOUS PAGE) Anne Lukins and Netta Sadovsky. Video. Dimensions variable. Mutual Service Exercise (still) Anne Lukins and Netta Sadovsky. Video. Dimensions variable. Photo credit: Fred Schmidt-Arenales.
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ANNE LUKINS
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JOSHUA MCGOWAN W R I T T E N BY
J E S S I CA ST E R N B AC H
The inspiration for Joshua McGowan’s project is time. Originally motivated by Alfred Stieglitz's Equivalents, McGowan aimed to move beyond the earlier artist’s scope to show how the sky acted as an expansive “canvas with no clear beginning and end,” like the passing of time. In this spirit, McGowan wanted to create an experience that went beyond a single moment frozen in a single frame, and began experimenting with technology to capture this sense of duration. In his first effort, the Firmament series, “video... was used to capture a scene in its perceived entirety, and a method of flatbed scanning was used to encode these videos,” as he described it. The images created by this process are linear bars of dark and light color that spike at uncertain points, monochromatic and abstract records of linear time. McGowan then tried to move beyond preconceived Western notions of time to capture its experiential quality. He again turned to technology, this time to projectors to encapsulate
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the viewer within an image. At work at 3 a.m., the artist accidentally bumped one of his projectors and caused the image to shift to a metal cabinet, splaying it onto the ceiling and thus the final phase had begun. He built moving frames containing concave mirrors to reflect his images taken from the Firmament series. In an aurora borealis fashion, these projected images warp and bend across the ceiling, producing a unique and all-encompassing experience. McGowan did not want to define time for his viewers, nor even find a new definition for himself, stating “my intentions with these was more to highlight the inconsistencies with my notions of linear time and leaving you, in a lot of ways with more questions than answers... I’ve come to terms with the fact that at the end of my two years here I’m going to have more questions than answers.”
Rain Drop Study 4 (Observed from 20:40 to 20:50) 8-27-2018 Philadelphia, PA Archival ink jet print. 11" x 14". Rain Drop Study 3 (Observed from 20:30 to 20:40) 8-27-2018 Philadelphia, PA Archival ink jet print. 11" x 14".
J O S H UA M C G OWAN
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Red Sky at Night (Stratus and Cirrostratus Clouds Observed from 22:00 to 22:37) Archival ink jet print. 40" x 60".
MCGOWAN THEN TRIED TO MOVE BEYOND PRECONCEIVED WESTERN NOTIONS OF TIME TO CAPTURE ITS EXPERIENTIAL QUALITY.
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March 21st 10:00-12:00 03-21-2018 Philadelphia, PA (above) Archival ink jet print. 40" x 60". March 21st 12:00-14:00 03-21-2018 Philadelphia, PA (right) Archival ink jet print. 40" x 60".
J O S H UA M C G OWAN
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DAN MIRER W R I T T E N BY
E R I N R I L E Y- LO P E Z
Industrial objects—steel drums, plastic buckets and other glass containers—are elevated from their pedestrian function into the realm of high art in Dan Mirer’s work. And while these objects share certain characteristics with 1970s Minimalism, from the phenomenological aspect to the materiality, Mirer’s objects are decidedly more organic and reference the origins of life in the natural world. Inside these vessels, Mirer places digital technologies that show the manipulation of air and water, forming bubbles, which vie for space as they cram their way inside defined spatial parameters.
onto the projection. The viewer might even try to shadow grab one of the bubbles as it zooms by or fit their hands and arms into the projection, melding their own body into the structured imagery. In another work, glass containers that are powered by compressed air are brought to life as their various parts click, snap and rattle, recalling the Futurist’s intonarumori (noise instruments) or sound machines whose elements were constructed from anything but traditional instruments; or John Cage’s atonal musical compositions that relied on chance and randomness.
Glass barrel tops hover and float weightlessly on top of the heavy 55-gallon drum base, which contrasts with the airy lightness of the bubbles in the video. Viewers are able to interact with the work in that they must stand above the drums and look down onto the video.
Mirer’s objects might remind the viewer of a science project with the laws of physics dictating the outcome of the bubbles’ patterns and organizations, however they might also draw the viewer’s attention to more metaphorical associations such as the hustle and bustle of everyday life with the bubbles as surrogates for our own hurried existence. This fusion of cold, hard, industrial materials with more round, soft and organic forms very much points to our chaotic lives in a seemingly ordered world
Instead of being overwhelmed and repelled by the scale of the work, as was typical of Minimalist artworks, Mirer’s objects are much more inviting to viewers. There is the possibility of becoming entranced by the bubbles’ movement, faster or slower, and scale, larger or smaller, as they swirl around one another creating loops and patterns as they organize themselves. In one large-scale video—a rear projection on the wall—viewers are able to interact with the work if they so choose by casting their own shadows
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DAN M I R E R
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Bubble Channels (PREVIOUS PAGE) Glass and sand. 48" tall.
Airlocks (ABOVE) Glass, water, air. Video still.
FROM THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ASPECT TO THE MATERIALITY, MIRER’S OBJECTS ARE DECIDEDLY MORE ORGANIC AND REFERENCE THE ORIGINS OF LIFE IN THE NATURAL WORLD.
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Untitled (ABOVE) Projection. 12' x 17'.
Bubbleplace 3D printed device, water, air. Video Still.
(BELOW)
DAN M I R E R
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JAE EUN PARK W R I T T E N BY
J E S S E R H I A N -Y U S U L L I VA N
A drive to visualize the abstract nature of relationships and emotion defines the work of Jae Eun Park. The process of art-making clarifies the emotional and physiological power dynamics that shape the world, and it is in the liminal space between the internal and external that these concepts find form in Park’s work. The texture and history of the medium of printmaking, along with its inherent reproductive nature, allow Park to explore ideas of influence and memory. Repetition and reiteration of a form create a visual rhythm that highlights the internal dynamics that manifest in groups of people. Though printmaking is Park’s primary medium, she also uses sculpture, drawing and installation to explore and define the questions and interests that link her artistic work.
In Connecting, Park reminisces on her own past, reflecting on her youth and the ways in which as a child she interacted with the world around her. Emotional affection to her family displayed through physical contact is distilled in the gestures and interrelations between the figures. While the outline of each individual is defined, the group is connected as a single mass, creating a comforting rhythm of interconnection and family. The surrounding space the figures inhabit is of generic masses and undulating shifts of dark and light and envelope the background and foreground of the composition. Hands are emphasized to reinforce the unity of the characters, creating moments of interrelations between the family unit while inviting the viewer into composition.
The desire to make connections and the interplay between physical touch and emotional connection form the core of Pretend Play. The barrier that divides the foreground figures from the large, partially obscured figure whose bright eyes and enlarged hands emerge from the dark background represents both a physical and an emotional obstacle. The characters in the foreground are avatars for Park herself and are visually defined by both their connection to each other and their relationship to the omnipresent figure behind the screen. The bags which they reach for and divide symbolize the constant input of emotions through which Park sorts and organizes. Though a despondent air can be read in the deep chiaroscuro that defines the composition, the scenes are not hopeless. In the dark, curiosity and imagination are permitted to flourish and the connections between the characters are strengthened.
Park’s keen eye for form and concerted interest in the physicality of emotion create works where tenderness and melancholy find connection and hope in the amorphous landscapes that surround the bonded figures
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Connecting (ABOVE) Aquatint and drypoint on copper plate. 9" x 12". Connecting 2 (RIGHT) Aquatint and drypoint on copper plate. 9" x 12".
J A E E U N PA R K
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Pretend Play Dark field monotype (series of 6). 30.3" x 21.8" each.
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Index Fingers
Polymer clay. Dimensions variable.
(FOLLOWING PAGE)
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THE PROCESS OF ART-MAKING CLARIFIES THE EMOTIONAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL POWER DYNAMICS THAT SHAPE THE WORLD, AND IT IS IN THE LIMINAL SPACE BETWEEN THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL THAT THESE CONCEPTS FIND FORM IN PARK’S WORK.
J A E E U N PA R K
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TEDDY PONEMAN W R I T T E N BY
J E S S I CA ST E R N B AC H
In an introspective performance, Teddy Poneman has fashioned himself into a terrible monster from Ashkenazi Jewish folklore, the Golem. The Golem was a being sculpted by a rabbi from the clay of a riverbed to serve as a protector for the community. Ultimately, the monster’s power became too overwhelming and he destroys everything that he was created to protect. Poneman fashioned his monster within a white space that gives the red earthen clay a powerful impact, pulling in the spectator with a kind of horrific awe. The artist’s human form is intermittently lost beneath pieces of red clay, some of which lay scattered on the floor as if recreating the folkloric riverbed. As the body rises the slick muscles
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seem to strain and ripple under the additional weight of the clay. With each movement, the artist demonstrates strength and determination and yet with each show of strength, there is more of the piece that falls away. Through this process, Poneman invokes the notion of failure: “The Golem makes it clear that we cannot turn to a monster to save us... [its] failure proves the importance of embracing our shared humanity and working in solidarity against forces of oppression.” In his dual role as monster and creator, Poneman invites the audience to experience his personal examination of identity as a white Jewish American man in a world witnessing the rise in fascism, anti-Semitism and ethnonationalism
Golem Series: Yearning Clay. Dimensions variable. Photo credit: Alec Smith. T E D DY P O N E M A N
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Golem Series: Yearning (PREVIOUS PAGE) Clay. Dimensions variable. Photo credit: Alec Smith.
Golem Series: Yearning (ABOVE) Clay. Dimensions variable. Photo credit: Alec Smith.
THE GOLEM MAKES IT CLEAR THAT WE CANNOT TURN TO A MONSTER TO SAVE US…[ITS] FAILURE PROVES THE IMPORTANCE OF EMBRACING OUR SHARED HUMANITY AND WORKING IN SOLIDARITY AGAINST FORCES OF OPPRESSION.
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NOÉL PUÉLLO W R I T T E N BY
E R I N R I L E Y- LO P E Z
Noél Puéllo is trying to tell a love story just not the Hollywood version viewers might be accustomed to seeing. After all, that is the stuff of fairy tales. By the 1970s, Laura Mulvey was already lambasting this classical era of film when she argued that it was effectively made through the lens of the patriarchy. Puéllo’s film broadens this argument even further with the inclusion of both queer and larger-bodied people instead of the blonde bombshell or svelte, heroic male reminiscent of Classical Hollywood cinema. In this work, Puéllo grapples with desirability and intimacy. Ultimately, she questions how a person can make another love them and then how one rebuilds themselves if that love is lost. A 30-minute filmic performance of this love story will be projected on a wall in the gallery. Vignettes from the film populated with puppets—stand ins for the performers in the film—will fill the space around it. The puppets will labor at stations, for example in a kitchen setting. Puéllo’s installation includes a range of different disciplines from performance, video, music and dance to sculpture and costume design. With a background in fibers and an interest in couture, she makes the costumes by hand—store bought fake flowers are sewn together to create a fantastical dress-like garment. In other costumes, Puéllo repurposes thrift and vintage store bought items to transform performers’ garments, in some cases showing the labor of the work with exposed seams. Puéllo’s costumes mask the performers' identities, through the use of a head-to-toe black bodysuit, intentionally erasing any individuality so that the viewer can project themselves
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into the work. Perhaps viewers will recognize scenes from their own lives of lost love or experience some empathy for the characters in the video. One particularly melancholic scene shows two characters seated next to one another on the floor propped up by a wall and rocking back and forth together; that is until one of them leaves and the other slumps over in despair. There are no spoken words between them but their movement is enough to suggest that something between them has been broken. In another scene, the two characters dance with one another in a kitchen, a Frank Reyes song plays in the background. Here the viewer catches a happier moment of intimacy between the two as they cling to one another lovingly rotating around the room. While it is expected that Hollywood films include happy endings, real lives are not that simple or easy. Hollywood provides an escape for viewers from their everyday lives. Puéllo’s film asks something else of the viewer, not to escape but to think for a moment what it means to exist in this world. Puéllo gets to the heart of the matter, the nitty-gritty, the parts no one ever wants to talk about—the labor of it all and the heartbreak
Untitled Fabric, resin, home, flowers and people. Dimensions variable.
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Untitled Cotton. Dimensions variable. (ABOVE)
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Untitled
Jeans. Dimensions variable.
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JINO RAHIMI W R I T T E N BY
K R I ST I N A C E N TO R E
In the future, perhaps the interiors of contemporary art museums will be logged as a data set of traceable patterns: a flow of white, minimal architectural elements with staircases circling upwards towards geometric skylights, the punctuation of the forms of visitors as they pass through the sunny atrium and into the galleries, the artworks appearing for many visitors to be site-specific, no matter their original intent. In her work The Artist as Viewer, Jino Rahimi researches this future with a photographer’s eye, a future that of course already exists in an archive that is public, easily searchable and arguably the apex of user-friendliness: Instagram. For Rahimi, selfies and other photos taken by museum visitors speak to the notion that global contemporary art, and specifically the institutions and exhibitions that seek to define it, are becoming ever more of a spectacle. Searching via various hashtags, Rahimi identifies visitorposted Instagram photos within contemporary art museums and galleries throughout the world. Rahimi takes stock of mimesis and repetition in the photos, such as the frequency of visitors who pose in imitation of the artworks they view, or stand in such a way as to cause their own bodies to take on the pattern of a work, almost blending into it. Perhaps unexpectedly, there is also a trove of photos depicting upward views through art museum staircases, as well as images that each depict a single visitor, looking almost forlorn, as if their identity has been lost in the immersive environment of the museum.
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These photos, as documents of visitor engagement within art institutions, ask for explanation. What do these images tell us about how the institution and the artwork meld into an “experience” for the wider public? Within the Instagram photos, does the echoing of forms that reference artworks, either consciously or subconsciously, signal a larger interest in engaging critically with the content of the artworks? What if the photographs of stairs, Rahimi muses, could be related to Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko’s obliquely angled photographs such as The Stairs (1929) and thus be a veiled demand for a utopian revolution? By asking such questions, Rahimi fractures limitations on looking at and engaging with art, leading to expanded possibilities for the role of the artist as well. In collecting these images and presenting them in the form of a lecture, Rahimi engages partly in a performative practice and partly in the writing of a history about what it means to make and view art: an art history which is situated not in the past but in the present and speculatively in the future
The Artist as Viewer Lecture - Performance.
RAHIMI ENGAGES PARTLY IN A PERFORMATIVE PRACTICE AND PARTLY IN THE WRITING OF A HISTORY ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO MAKE AND VIEW ART: AN ART HISTORY WHICH IS SITUATED NOT IN THE PAST BUT IN THE PRESENT, AND SPECULATIVELY IN THE FUTURE
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The Artist as Viewer (Research Image) Lecture - Performance.
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KATHERINE REULBACH W R I T T E N BY
MAR K CLAES
Articles worn on the body fulfill specific intentions and desires in the wearer and, in a practical sense, we dress in gear deemed functional or appropriate for the occasion. Check the weather before leaving the house. What might be needed today? A coat? An umbrella? These objects will offer protection from whatever elements one may encounter. Additionally, these objects provide a feeling of comfort: warmth, weight, a tactile sensation of a fabric’s weaving upon the skin. Katherine Reulbach incorporates the related roles of comfort and protection in what is worn on the body into her studio jewelry. Reulbach’s grandmother taught her how to knit but now she works with a variety of high-to-low end machines to digitally manipulate various qualities of plastic to create her striking works. Truth to materials is significant to Reulbach,
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who does not remove the stepping (markings) often visible on the individual plastic links. Each piece has an intentional element of hand-fabrication, an example of how Reulbach integrates her notion of comfort into her practice. Within a piece, she wishes to visually combine rather than separate both the mechanical and hand-made aspects–to present the comforting and protective qualities of both modes of production. Through naming her pieces after medieval attire, Reulbach invokes the power and functionality of objects worn on the body to protect the wearer from harm, intending to bestow that ability upon those who wear her art
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Brigandine (PREVIOUS PAGE)
15” x 24”.
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PLA, elastic.
Gorget SLS Nylon, sterling silver. 7" x 14".
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Bevor (TOP) Photopolymer resin, felt. 10" x 24".
Gauntlet (BOTTOM) PLA, elastic. 4" x 4".
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KAT RICHARDS W R I T T E N BY
E M M A C . R O B E R TS
Kat Richards collapses bodies into a language of shapes or rather suggestions; maybe a hand, maybe a wing, maybe a nose. Detaching familiar corporeal forms from their contexts, the artist creates a physical index of shapes, then moves these parts around like puzzle pieces, repositioning them in theatrically intimate pictorial worlds. Fully embracing the fact that their index of shapes will never fit together neatly as a puzzle should, Richards questions how such anatomical forms occupy space. The resulting image reads as a deconstructed body, mimicking the organization of an architectural model and the grandeur of an epic poem. By reimagining and tuning parts of the body individually, each shape takes on a critical role within the arrangement. Richards largely constructs these spaces as monoprints, which applies the techniques of printmaking—a medium for multiples—to the production of a single, unique image. Yet, monoprinting may also involve modifiable elements, potentially yielding infinitely changing scenes through a rotating vocabulary of forms. Richards is constantly reworking bodies into new spatial arrangements, describing them as queer, decontextualized bodies in a space that simultaneously attracts and confuses. Within this paradoxical space, these fragmented bodies are read through a
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peculiar feeling of disorienting desire. However, through a deus ex machina-style resolution, this feeling is resolved, in part by how pleasurable and entertaining these scenes are to wander through. Rather than unfolding a narrative through time, Richards uses space, harnessing the tools of printmaking to make their images as operatic as possible. Gradient, a shifting range of colors, can be read through space like one reads a story, creating the illusion of time in a flat, still image. The artist channels the absurdity that forms the logic of myth into their images. Fascinated by world-building, they take an exploratory approach to what a narrative can be. Just as they are consciously unraveling bodies, they are consciously unraveling the rules of didactic narratives. Their images become worlds to run around in, a space to make sense of. Like an open-world video game, there is no task or goal to accomplish in these pictorial worlds, instead Richards offers a space to exist in, even if only temporarily
Awaiting (TOP) Monoprint. 30" x 22". Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith. Float
(BOTTOM) Monoprint. 30" x 22". Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.
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Legend
Monoprint. 36" x 48". Photo credit: Alec Logan Smith.
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ELIZABETH CLAIRE ROSE W R I T T E N BY
PA I G E H OWA R T H
Elizabeth Claire Rose’s work engages use of multiples to convey her artistic dialogue within both traditional and experimental processes of printmaking and photography. Her work references geological formations encountered during her past education in Wilderness Studies and Resource Conservation at the University of Montana. The persistent presence and continued change of these geological formations resonate within the theme of time she often addresses. With muted, natural colors and multiple layers, Rose represents the various latitudes and altitudes she visits, employing natural shapes and lines to create large-scale prints reflecting rising altitudes and changing landscapes. Rose is particularly interested in the evolution of a place over time with many of her works being site-specific and located in the natural world. Her process involves using photography to document the work at the site, chronicling the effect time is having on the piece. In this manner, Rose considers geological formations as natural artforms that develop over time amidst the landscape. This process allows her to emphasize the enduring forms of natureevolving, changing and ultimately reflecting the artistic setting she places it in-before taking the photographic information she gained back to her studio to create mixed media prints showcasing the forms and endurance of nature.
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Most often she uses the copper plate matrix as a vehicle to indicate a narrative of change, showing natural shapes, lines and colors that seamlessly blend together. Through etching and engraving processes, each matrix is etched with a specific site or place. Combining and layering printmaking processes allows Rose to alter the matrix in diverse ways to illustrate different atmospheric conditions or geographic locations. By working in multiples, she is able to represent the multifaceted features of an individual site and to convey the sense of permanence and gradual change that characterizes a geological timescale. In her work for this exhibition, she uses multiples to reference different altitudinal and latitudinal zones, displaying maps and legends alongside her print and photographic work to orient viewers to the different ecological regions she has visited. Through this process, Rose illuminates the connectedness of these diverse locations regardless of their distance from one another. These connections then allow her to illustrate their relevance to mankind. In this regard, she draws attention to the temporal impermanence of human beings in relation to nature. She questions our ability to endure over time in contrast to the natural world and how we disproportionately impact environment’s capacity to endure and sustain us. This sustainability is highlighted through her use of multiples to emphasize not only human impact on nature but also nature’s impact on humans
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Blown Off
Photolithograph, risograph, and intaglio in relief with chine colle. 22" x 18". (unframed). (PREVIOUS PAGE)
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Lineation (ABOVE) Mezzotint and intaglio printed in relief with chine colle. 22" x 18". (unframed).
Void
(RIGHT) Mezzotint and spit bite with chine colle. 22" x 18". (unframed).
SHE DRAWS ATTENTION TO THE TEMPORAL IMPERMANENCE OF HUMAN BEINGS IN RELATION TO NATURE. ELIZABETH CLAIRE ROSE
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Levels and Zones Detail of work included in an installation of intaglio monoprints on kozo and kitikata gampi. Intaglio and relief. 8' x 18". ELIZABETH CLAIRE ROSE
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NETTA SADOVSKY W R I T T E N BY
E M M A C . R O B E R TS
When I asked Netta Sadovsky to speak with me about her work, we initially agreed to refrain from art-centric language. I hoped to avoid the trappings of artspeak in order to have a direct conversation about what motivates her practice. She started by discussing her interests in social work and psychotherapy but found it nearly impossible to avoid referring to her artistic practice. After saying “art” 11 times in the first 10 minutes of our conversation, Sadovsky declared, “I am breaking your rules.” After recalibrating, we were able to get at some of her root interests without reference to art, such as the paradox of desiring total closeness and the meaninglessness of closeness without boundaries and the relationship between small group dynamics and large-scale political conflict. Prior to our conversation, Sadovsky sent me an essay by the artist Andrea Fraser, which addresses how artists treat social conditions as subject matter. She writes that these conditions, “tend to be reduced in art discourse to elements of a symbolic rather than practical system,” leading to grandiose claims of social impact and critique without regard to the “reality of art’s social conditions.” Speaking to Sadovsky, it became apparent that her interest in social conditions is of a practical, and not merely symbolic, nature. For example, she is currently obtaining the core competencies to handle interpersonal conflict, seeking a master’s degree in social work and undergoing training in psychodrama and group relations.
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Though Sadovsky has long identified as an artist, she now appears to be working on the periphery, abandoning object-making and nearly teetering out of the field altogether. If she is obtaining the practical skills of a therapist, why does she locate her work in an artistic frame? Sadovsky remains attached to art-making in part for its relationship to usefulness. Unlike therapy, artworks can be extravagantly and amateurishly experimental, even when grounded in useful techniques. Furthermore, Sadovsky’s interest in the therapeutic modalities she appropriates is a reflexive one: The works invite viewers to reflect on these tools. In a recent work, Sadovsky and collaborator Anne Lukins (78) embarked on a series of exercises with the intent of re-training their relationship, an experiment built on drama therapy and gestalt therapy. Intensely cautious of each other's boundaries, they attempt to train themselves to compete through overt physical confrontation. My original goal in speaking to Sadovsky without the comforts of art language was to explore the tendency for artists to use interdisciplinary research as a means to an end. As we both struggled to find our footing in this conversation, I realized that Sadovsky’s interdisciplinary approach to art-making demonstrates a nuanced understanding of small group dynamics and psychotherapy. Rather than using these fields as emblematic instruments in the production of her work, Sadovsky uses art-making as a practical tool to experiment with interpersonal intimacy and actual conflict
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Mutual Service Exercise (still) (PREVIOUS PAGE) Anne Lukins and Netta Sadovsky. Video. Dimensions variable. Mutual Service Exercise (still) (BELOW) Anne Lukins and Netta Sadovsky. Video. Dimensions variable. Mutual Service Exercise (props) (FOLLOWING PAGE) Anne Lukins and Netta Sadovsky. Silicone. 3" x 8" x .75".
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RATHER THAN USING THESE FIELDS AS EMBLEMATIC INSTRUMENTS IN THE PRODUCTION OF HER WORK, SADOVSKY USES ART-MAKING AS A PRACTICAL TOOL TO EXPERIMENT WITH INTERPERSONAL INTIMACY AND ACTUAL CONFLICT.
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RACHEL STURINO HALL W R I T T E N BY
M I C H A E L CA R R O L L
Why do we accept the history we are taught to be the whole truth and how are these narratives shaped by a cultural institution’s politics? Rachel Sturino Hall considers the ways in which systems of power dictate exhibition design. She experiments with varying amounts of wall text to obscure the presumed veracity of the text itself. Her interest in such didactic material extends to the supplementary documents with cataloged information for the visitor’s reference as well as a designated reading space for visitors to ruminate. Sturino Hall assembles a myriad of acquired, fabricated and found objects that are displayed on traditional pedestals and shelves alongside less conventional platforms like television trays that are accompanied by salon-like groupings of ephemera hung on the walls, recalling domestic interiors. The air of informality generated by these unorthodox means of display blurs the boundaries around what is conventionally considered an art exhibition and perpetuates the artist’s interest in amalgamating diverse display methods and techniques. Industrial objects and assorted references to labor feature prominently in her artwork and emphasize her broader critique of the relative agency afforded curators and administrators over that of the people, the worker, the public, etc.
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The rich inclusivity of materials and media utilized for these installations—clay multiples, two-dimensional imagery, video, text, etc.—reiterates her interest in the public as a pluralist entity that encompasses a multiplicity of viewers and rejects the elitist gatekeeping of traditional cultural institutions. Viewers must move around the exhibition space and survey the array of artifacts and ephemera to discern the meaning of the work as a whole. Her installations feel open-ended in this way and unique to each viewer—there is no one way to interact with Sturino’s Hall’s artwork nor any one message to take away. Instead, she lays out vignettes as narratives for onlookers to digest in a way that feels intentional, yet random at first glance, leaving onlookers to grapple with the fragments of information provided. The overall cluttered nature of her installations recalls a meticulously organized vitrine tucked away in an anthropological or natural history museum but Sturino’s assemblages are not bound by the confines of a cabinet. Rather than perpetuate the inequity of exhibition design precedents the artist takes issue with, she embraces an absurd and satirical thread both in subject matter and the materials showcased throughout the space. The levity of this approach reminds onlookers of the artist’s playful alternative to traditional standards of display. In strong contrast to a purely cynical pessimism with no indication of a way forward, Sturino Hall attempts to shed light on what American history often overlooks
Objects Series A (DETAIL ABOVE) Porcelain, enamel paint, white gold luster, Plasti-dip. 1" x 1" objects on board. Photo credit: Alec Smith. Objects Series A Porcelain, enamel paint, white gold luster, Plasti-dip. 1" x 1" objects on board. Photo credit: Alec Smith.
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Tools/Toys, Size: L (LEFT) Pants, trashbags, porcelain, tank ball, plastic rope. 1' x 1.2' x 8". Photo credit: Alec Smith. A and B Series: The Sacred and Mundane (RIGHT) Sacred and mundane objects. Dimensions variable. View from Security (BELOW) Closed circuit camera, monitor, borrowed chair and table, mini donuts, notepad, dry leaves, dust. Dimensions variable.
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CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
G I OVAN NA B E LLETTI E R E
M I C HAE L CAR R O LL
K R I STI NA C E NTO R E
MAR K C LAE S
Giovanna Bellettiere is a second-year MA candidate specializing in American art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her particular interest lies in the history of photography. She is spending this semester writing her master's thesis on the camera work of Alice Austen, Alfred Stieglitz and Bernice Abbott. Bellettiere received her BA in secondary education and english with a minor in art history from Southern Connecticut State University. Bellettiere plans to gain experience in the museum field within the Philadelphia area.
Michael Carroll is an art history masters student studying LGBTQ+ artists of modern and contemporary art in the United States. His thesis examines the relationship of archives and art historical discourse through a queer lens. Michael received his BA in studio art and art history from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University and he works at Temple University Libraries in the Metadata and Digitization Services Department.
Kristina Centore is a writer, multimedia artist, musician and curator based in Philadelphia. She is currently a first-year student in the MA program in art history at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, focusing on early 20th-century avant-garde art movements as part of a broader interest in intersections between modern and contemporary art, politics, technology and identity. She is currently working on a research project about Italian Futurism and its relationship to global politics.
Mark Claes is in the first year of the MA in Art History Program. They are interested in modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on photographic work. In the past, they have curated exhibitions in conjunction with the San Francisco Art Commission and interned at Pier 24 Photography as a docent, research librarian and archivist. While on campus, they also work part-time for the Digital Library Initiative as an archivist.
N OAH RAN D O LP H
ERIN R I LEY-LO P E Z
E M MA C. R O B E RTS
E M I LY S C H O LLE N B E R G E R
Noah Randolph is a graduate student in the Department of Art History at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where he specializes in modern and contemporary art. Before coming to Philadelphia, Randolph received his BA in art history from the University of Louisville and worked in development for various arts organizations in Kentucky. His current research involves theories of cultural transference, appropriation and politics in visual culture; the professionalization of artistic practice; and Italian modernism.
Erin Riley-Lopez is a second-year PhD student at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She was formerly the curator of the Freedman Gallery at Albright College in Reading, PA, where she also taught courses in art history and arts administration. Prior to that, she was an associate curator at The Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City. She is transitioning to teaching while maintaining a curatorial practice. Her areas of interest include contemporary art, performance, exhibition histories and queer and feminist theories.
Emma C. Roberts will graduate with a BA in art history and a minor in screen studies in the spring of 2019. Her current research centers on participatory art and the documentation of time-based projects. How can art be embedded into the world? How is authenticity constructed? What is a gesture towards reality? What is lived experience? She wants to ask questions. She is anxious about answers. She wants to be a participant. She feels conflicted about critical distance.
Emily Schollenberger is a firstyear PhD student in art history at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Originally from Annapolis, MD, she received a BA in art with a concentration in art history from Covenant College, Georgia. Her research interests include collective memory of trauma in contemporary art, particularly in Latin America and the American South.
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PAI G E H OWARTH
TARA KAU F MAN
M I C HAE L LALLY
ALI P R I NTZ
Paige Howarth is a MA student in the Department of Art History at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where she specializes in American art of the 19th century. Before arriving at Temple, she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware with a double major in art history and visual art. Her current research focuses on the late-career portraits of Thomas Eakins, examining how his realist style led to a physical “un-ideal,” which he used to probe his sitter’s inner personalities.
Tara Kaufman is a second-year student in the MA in Art History Program at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Her research focuses on environmentally-motivated contemporary art of the Americas, early American art ecocriticism and global modern and contemporary art. She received her BA in art history from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and has completed internships with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Projects+ Gallery in St. Louis.
Michael Lally is a first-year PhD student studying Byzantine, Eastern Mediterranean and Ethiopian Christian Art at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. He received a BA in both art history and physics from Middlebury College. His current research involves exploring the phenomenological experience of monasteries, focusing on the relationship between the individual and the space surrounding them during the liturgy. Further research includes examining the representations of theological controversies in opposing manuscripts.
Ali Printz is a second-year PhD student in art history, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary Appalachian Art. Printz is also an emerging historical painter who has shown both nationally and internationally, an independent curator, and a New York City transplant who worked in the art world for almost a decade. Printz received her MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York, and both a BA in art history and BFA in painting from West Virginia University.
J E S S I CA STE R N BAC H
J E S S E R H IAN-YU S U LLIVAN
H UA (E LLE N) Z HAN G
Jessica Sternbach is an art history PhD student specializing in Dutch Baroque art working with Dr. Ashley West. She received her MA in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 2016. Her current focus is on issues of social art history and the ways in which art and its surrounding culture react and interact.
A first-year PhD student in art history, Sullivan focuses on 15th-century religious art from Northern Italy. She received her MA from the Courtauld and her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her background as a visual artist forms the core of interest in exploring the boundaries between convention and creative license. Prior to her time at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Sullivan worked in Florence as an art history TA at Studio Arts College International and as a museum guide with Context Travel.
Hua (Ellen) Zhang is an art history MA student at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where she studies Italian Renaissance art and arts administration. While her focus as an undergraduate student involved the representations of women in Renaissance era religious paintings, her current research examines the cultural transmission and appropriation of Asian art during the Italian Renaissance. As an active member of Tyler’s Arts Administration Program, she is also interested in curatorial methodologies, program development, museum stewardship and arts philanthropy.
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2001 N. 13th St. Philadelphia, PA 19122 tyler.temple.edu/2019-mfa-exhibitions Graduate Catalogue Advisors Mariola Alvarez Chad D. Curtis Philip Glahn Graduate Catalogue Coordinator Kati Gegenheimer Graduate Catalogue Student Representatives Lauren Fueyo Joshua McGowan Erin Riley-Lopez Editors Mariola Alvarez Kati Gegenheimer Philip Glahn Olivia Menta Erin Riley-Lopez Zachary Vickers Art Direction & Design Modern Good Matt Bouloutian, Tyler BFA ‘99 Emma Linsay, Tyler BFA ‘18 Printer Sea Group Graphics, Inc. Copyright © 2019 Tyler School of Art All rights reserved Copyright for individual images belongs to the individual artist as listed on each page. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the Artist or Tyler School of Art.
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