Current MFA Students at PAFA! Opening June 27 5-7p

Plus One

The Graduate Program at PAFA is pleased to present Plus one, an exhibition that

pairs PAFA MFA students with students from the MFA programs at Tyler School of Art and Penn Design.  

Even under the best conditions, studying art in graduate school can be an insular experience.  Students spend hours behind closed doors making work and don’t always get out to meet artists and students beyond their department or school.  Philadelphia is home to many art schools, but connections aren’t always made, and students with similar interests might work across town from one another without ever sharing their ideas. Plus One was organized with this in mind, as a way for students from different programs to connect and start a dialogue.

Five PAFA MFA students were invited to show work in PAFA’s Gallery 128 for the exhibition. These students were asked to each invite a guest from another Philadelphia MFA program to exhibit with them. The result is a show of ten artists, working in the same city, who have just finished the first year of their graduate studies. No matter which school they attend or what medium they work in, these students have likely shared a similar first year experience of experimentation and trying to find out who they are as artists.  For some, their work may be in a place of transition, but all of them are at an incredibly exciting time where they have cast the net and anything is possible. This exhibition is an opportunity for these students to share their experiences, exchange ideas and start conversations that will hopefully continue long after the show is over.

The PAFA artists and their invited guests are:

Sean Hildreth (PAFA) and Seneca Weintraut (Tyler)

Ruthie Iglesias (PAFA) and Jennifer Nugent (Tyler) Marcelle Reinecke (PAFA) and Kasey Short (Penn) Rebecca Sedehi (PAfA) and Jennifer Berman (Penn) Shane Smith (PAFA) and Natessa Amin (Penn)

Organized by Clint Jukkala, Chair of Graduate Programs, PAFA

Opening Reception:

June 27, 5-­‐7 pm

Exhibition runs through July 27

The exhibition Plus One coincides with the exhibition, Heads and Hearts, The work of Yoni Hamburger and Ashley Wick on display at PAFA’s School of Fine Arts Gallery

For more information go to:  

http://www.pafa.edu/Events-­‐Exhibitions/On-­‐View/1257/

Mark Pease (MFA '03) showing at the Soap Factory, Minneapolis

Mark Pease's, 3D animation “Galleria” will be part of the group exhibition “Americana” at the Soap Factory, Minneapolis, opening Friday, June 20th.  

Opening reception: June 20th, 7-11pm 

Exhibition Runs: Jun 20 - Aug 17, 2014

The Soap Factory presents “Americana", a group exhibition featuring the work of 9 emerging artists from across North America. Curated by Executive Director Ben Heywood, Americana features drawing, sculpture, video and installation work.

All the work proposed for this show approaches ways of understanding 'America' and the 'American Experience' through work that directly examines the political aspects of various forms of American society, work that mirrors the transformation of culture through the lens of 'America', or more open poetic re-orgnisations of 'American' tropes. The Soap Factory itself, a 130 year old relic of the conquest, subjugation and industrialization of a continent, is an artifact of the nostalgia, evoked by ‘Americana’, so it is entirely appropriate that its decayed architecture be a setting, a container, for such ideas.

Mark’s piece, “Galleria” is a 25-minute, 3D animation depicting the exterior surfaces of a modern shopping mall recorded by a weightless camera as it slowly traverses its contours and enclosures.

The CGI rendering of the mall parallels its artificiality but also furthers the artificiality by removing imperfections and variation, resulting in a depiction that has a crystal-like clarity. By presenting this at an extremely slow speed, the viewer is confronted with a hyper-synthetic representation of light, shadow, and space. 

More info can be found at http://soapfactory.org/ and also http://www.markpease.com/galleria/

Mohammadreza Mirzaei (MFA'14) curated 'This is a true story. This is not a true story.' for Landscape Stories

Mohammadreza Mirzaei (MFA'14) curated 'This is a true story. This is not a true story.' for Landscape Stories

Mohammadreza Mirzaei curated a special issue on Iran for Landscape Stories. This selection of photography looks at imagery by 22 visual artists who tell their own stories about Iran.

Below is the intro to the project:

In recent decades images of Iran in different artistic mediums as well as photography have been contradictory. More than three decades ago, Iran was represented as a beautiful country, the land of the ancient tale of One Thousand and One Nights. Somewhere to fall in love. The country where Agnes Varda made her short film Plaisir d’Amour en Iran, and where Albert Lamorisse made his cinematic poem Le Vent des amoureux. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 suddenly changed everything. Iran became an aggressive country, and a new government that had strong Anti-American and Anti-Israeli sentiments. Those were the years of the Revolution, with its excitement and fluctuations. Soon after that, the invasion of Iran by Iraq caused the 20th century’s longest conventional war. A useless war and bloody years, so many young boys who died to preserve their motherland, a whole generation’s youth stolen form them. Many homes and lives were destroyed and so many opportunities were burnt.

Revolution and war were two important elements helping to form and develop Iranian photography. In the following years Iran became increasingly isolated from the outside world. These years were less bountiful for Iranian photography. What types of images could possibly be representative of all of the contradictions and realities of this new isolated Iran? Shirin Neshat who had left Iran shortly after the Revolution in 1979 to study art at university in the US, came back to Iran for the first time in 1990 and created her series Women of Allah and since has made numerous other bodies of work about Iran. Neshat is Iranian, but having not been witness to those ten tumultuous years of Revolution and War, her gaze, upon return to this completely changed country, had no difference with an outsider. With her talent, she created a mysterious aesthetic to represent a part of Iranian reality to the West. Let’s remember some of her imagery; a group of women walking in front of the ever naked sea. It’s beautiful and poetic, it could be a part of a surrealistic poem. However, since it is done in Iran it addresses issues of identity, women, Islam and other issues dealing with a third world Islamic country. Neshat’s incredible success made a new generation of Iranian artists depict their country as a foreign and strange place. The images had to be simple to be able to have a certain interpretation after seeing them. These artists grew up in Iran, and they were insiders, but they were working for the audience who were outside. As the waves of globalization were transforming the world including Iran, they had to be “local” to be seen in “universal” context.

The new social situation of Iran in 2000s and of course the effect of the internet created a newer image of Iran. Now that I’m looking back, I find images of every subject in this era. From Iranian social life and its contradictions to landscape and urban-scape, photography as a tool to see ordinary realities, as a medium of telling stories, and as a way to criticize the political issues, (of course in a quiet voice). There are also the Iranian photographers living outside of the country, who came back to look at their homeland, with a sense of discovery or nostalgia. Apart from that, we can find a few examples of the life of the Iranian diaspora. Some foreign photographers have also found the opportunity to travel to Iran and see the country through their own personal lens as well. They have reflected different realities, from the beauty of the architecture to the cool contradictions of a post revolutionary Islamic country.

This issue of Landscape Stories sets out to show meaning to all these contradictions and mysteries of Iran through different fragments. We further hope to show some new layers of Iranian photography, and photographers who have had until now, a smaller audience.

Attachments area

landscape-stories-iran.jpg

Philadelphia's Hiro Sakaguchi at Nancy Margolis Gallery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FLOWERING A GROUP SHOWNancy Blum, Lynn Braswell, Maya Brym, Ryan Cobourn, Eloise Corr Danch, Lucy Fradkin, Meghan Howland, Hir FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FLOWERING A GROUP SHOW Nancy Blum, Lynn Braswell, Maya Brym, Ryan Cobourn, Eloise Corr Danch,  Lucy Fradkin, Meghan Howland, Hiro Sakaguchi 6/19 - 8/1/2014 RECEPTION 6/19 6-8PM Nancy Margolis Gallery is pleased to announce its summer exhibition, FLOWERING, will open to the public Thursday, June 19 from 6-8pm through August 1, 2014. FLOWERING defined literally is a plant in bloom, metaphorically rich, in a full stage of development. The paintings by the eight accomplished artists in this exhibition fit these definitions, and were selected for their engaging personal expression and styles. Their genre, unalike and varied, runs from realism, abstraction, narration, decoration, patterning, and embellishment. Flowers throughout history have been a universal mode of expression to convey feelings of love, grief, forgiveness, pleasure, joy, and celebration, so it is fascinating to see how each artist in his and her individual voice integrates the FLOWERING theme into their work. Nancy Blum, inspired by 17th century botanical drawings, is known for her obsessive wonderlands of bold, monumental flowers rendered on paper in ink, colored pencil, graphite and gouache, either as floral clusters or single huge erotic blooms. Blum received a M.F.A.f rom Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI; BA, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. The artist has participated in many solos and group exhibition in the US, and has work in important public and private collections, including The Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID, and The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ. Lynn Braswell mixes luminous reds, oranges, bright blues, yellows, and carefully crafted subtle contrasting tones to make her floral compositions. The paint, layered onto the canvas with short staccato strokes sets up a gavotte of color and form. From a distance the canvas reveals an array of floral that gradually molt into abstraction as the eye moves closer to the painting on the canvas. Braswell received her MFA from City College, CUN2, New York; Attended the New York Studio School; BFA, and from Pratt Institute, New York. Braswell divides her time between New York City and Maine, exhibiting in both locations, and placing her work in many of the private collections in these two areas. Traditionally trained, Ryan Cobourn works from observation, memory and intuition. His subject is not about specificity as much as an idea, or thought, executed with dreamy colors, free gestural brushwork ultimately evolving into luscious reconstructed abstract expressionist paintings. Cobourn received his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and MFA from Indiana University. He is currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited in New York, California, Georgia, and Louisiana in group and solo shows. His work has been featured in numerous publications including, Painting Perceptions, Painters-Table, Hyperallergic, Zagat and John Yau’s essay, “Twenty-Five Painters Under Thirty-Five”. Maya Brym Spanning the genres of still life painting, and abstraction, Brym’s paintings intertwine artificial elements to reveal an uneasy beauty in the synthesis. Nature and the way humans interact with it remains the artist’s major source of inspiration. Brym received a MFA in painting from the University of Pennsylvania; BA in Art, Yale University, New Haven, CT. The artist has participated in many group exhibitions in the Metropolitan, New York, and Brooklyn areas. Eloise Corr Danch, born and raised in Chicago, is a versatile freelance artist who now lives and works in New York City. After an early focus on painting and illustration, she has expanded into paper sculpture, creating paper flowers, paper dresses and a various other paper props and sets for a variety of clients and publications. Eloise graduated with a Master of Arts in Illustration from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2007. Before FIT, she studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied fashion illustration in France at the Paris American Academy. Eloise received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from The University of Montana-Missoula. Meghan Howland’s remarkable figurative paintings have a knock your socks off punch. Coalescing an edgy mood, idiosyncratic theme and composition with beautiful sultry painting the artist’s subjects suggest yearning, loss, and disaster. Relying on shocking contrasts as oppositional foils the artist births fresh pink toned female beauties surrounded by voluptuous pastel flowers, and ominously present, scary black birds. Meghan Howland lives and works in Portland, Maine. She received her BFA from New Hampshire Institute of Art, and exhibiting widely has established herself as an up and coming artist. Lucy Fradkin explores color, pattern, and diversity in her luminous portraits. Lush rich colors, intricate ornamentation, collage, and pencil blend together characteristically in her work. Contemporary, yet stylistically naive, she takes influence from folk, Indian and Persian miniature painting. Fradkin’s interiors of intimate domestic settings convey and depict stories of daily life. Self taught, Fradkin has shown in galleries in the United States, and abroad including Italy, China, and Japan. She is a 2011 recipient of the prestigious Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Grant and the 2009 Pollock-Krasner Grant. Hiro Sakaguchi’s work is influenced by two diverse cultures, Japan where he grew, and the US, where he now resides. The paintings depict autobiographical elements, an amalgam from memory and everyday life, creating a story in which emotions can dwell and depart. Hiro Sakaguchi lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He received his MFA in 1996 from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and BFA in 1993 from the University of Arts in Philadelphia. He has exhibited paintings in a number of galleries throughout the United States. Please contact the gallery for more information at margolis@nancymargolisgallery.com   ©2014 Nancy Margolis Gallery | 523 West 25th St. New York NY 10001