Kasey Short (MFA '15) at Big Medium, Austin, TX

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Jordan Gentry gentry@bigmedium.org (512) 939-6665

Big Medium Presents

Kasey Short: 5 Plus Hearts

​

Exhibition dates: July 12 - August 8, 2014

Opening reception: Friday, July 12, 7-10pm

Address: 916 Springdale Rd, Bldg 2, #101

Gallery hours: Tue - Sat, 12-6pm and by appointment

5 Plus Hearts explores different approaches in encountering human behavior and survival. The perspective is built from underneath the bleachers to simulate an environment of the minds’ subconscious. The installation navigates through the brain activating seduction, confusion, and sensation. In the process of the installation, my work relies heavily on instinct and humor. 5 Plus Hearts is informed by the notion of Divine Sarcasm, which is a representation of good and evil within American Institutions.

Kasey Short is an American artist from Texas. Short’s artistic output stems from his background in painting, branching off into sculpture, installation, printmaking and video. Short's recent work examines the anti-heroic object, Americana, sporting events, and engages in a playful and at times irreverent dialogue with art historical icons. Rigorously casual and emphatically apathetic, Short's sculptural work presents familiar forms distorted and transformed through both intuitive and counter-intuitive processes involving word play, material shifts and purposefully failed likenesses. In his video works, the artist depicts the scenes adjacent to his other pieces, producing a haunting, comedic and disjointed reality in which clear narrative is disambiguated. The way in which he uses sound and performers invents a world where the behaviors and circumstances are at once familiar and mysterious, furthering the confusion of the artist’s intentions.

Kasey Short was included in the 2013 Texas Biennial, and has shown internationally at venues including Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Teal Art gallery in Breckenridge, CO and University of Texas at San Antonio taking part in the 2010 and 2012 New Art/Arte Nuevo Biennial. Kasey is a MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

www.kaseyshort.com

ABOUT BIG MEDIUM

Big Medium is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary art in Texas. Big Medium produces the East Austin Studio Tour, the West Austin Studio Tour, the Texas Biennial, and present innovative exhibitions throughout the year. Big Medium provides affordable studio space to artists, and partners with various organizations in Texas to help foster the arts and facilitate an inclusive cultural dialogue between artists and their communities.

Further information is available at www.bigmedium.org or email info@bigmedium.org

Big Medium is supported by generous contributions from private donors and funded in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future.

Laura Bernstein (MFA'14) earns ISC award

Laura Bernstein was chosen from an exceptional number of nominees; 374 students from over 151 colleges and universities, world-wide. The jury, which included Kathryn Mikesell, Founder of the Fountainhead Residency and Studios, Miami, FL; Stefano Catalani, Director of Art, Craft & Design at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, WA; and Donald Lipski, Sculptor, NY, reviewed more than 904 images of student art work to make their selections for this prestigious award.   

Bernstein has been named a 2014 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Honorable Mention.

Laura will be recognized in the 2014 October issue of Sculpture magazine, as well as on the www.sculpture.orgwebsite. Please extend our congratulations to the entire art department of University of Pennsylvania.

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

Naomi Reis, class of 2005, at Mixed Greens NYC

"Planted," a new window project, opens next Thur May 29 at Mixed Greens. There will be some painted silhouettes of non-native foliage, real non-native foliage, and fake non-native foliage staged together (a bit awkwardly, as in life.) And some new collages will be available in the Flat File. Up through Aug 29 - please come say hello. 

Coming up this summer, "Back to Eden," a group show with many artists I admire, opens Thur June 26, 6-8pm, at the Museum of Biblical Image. On Tue Aug 5 at 6:30pm, Lina Puerta and I will talk with curator Jennifer Scanlan about "The Garden as Symbol." Participating artists: Lynn Aldrich, Anonda Bell, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Mat Collishaw, Sean Capone, Jim Dine, Mark Dion, Barnaby Furnas, Adam Fuss, Rona Pondick, Lina Puerta, Naomi Reis, Pipilotti Rist, Alexis Rockman, Dana Sherwood, Mary Temple, and Marina Zurkow,  and Fred Tomaselli. 

Links and press release below for more info. Thank you for your support and please keep me updated with your news! 

Planted
May 29 - Aug 29, 2014

Opens Thursday May 29, 6-8pm

Windows Project at Mixed Greens

531 West 26th Street, New York, NY

Back to Eden: Contemporary Artists Wander the Garden

June 27 - Sept 28, 2014

Museum of Biblical Art

1865 Broadway, New York, NY

MFAs in Berlin: "Das stille Leben des Sammlers Kempinskit"

Opening: Sat, May 24, 7-10 pm

Note: The exhibition is held at a private limited-time-only location in Berlin, accessible by RSVP only. Please email the gallery for location: rsvp@thisisexile.com
 
Das stille Leben des Sammlers Kempinski

You are cordially invited to the final exhibition project by Exile in Berlin and to the inaugural Private Viewing of the imaginary collection of Mr Kempinksi. This exhibition brings together works by over 60 artists, now presented for the very first time for collective viewing.

The New York-based curator Mr Miller and the Berlin-based Mr Siekmeier were asked by Mr. Kempinksi to create a collage of artworks that reflects upon the relationship between art and collecting.

The Kempinski collection is by definition fluctuant and can move freely from one context to the next.

Participating Artists:

Nadja Abt
Aggtelek
Joseph Akel
Peggy Ahwesh
Anonymous
Francisco Berna
Douglas Boatwright
Matt Borruso
Matthew Burcaw
Elijah Burgher
Luke Butler
Anders Clausen
T.M. Davy
Mark Dilks
Discoteca Flaming Star
Paul Gabrielli
Robin Graubard
Markus Guschelbauer
Teenie Harris
Frank Hauschildt
Adrian Hermanides
Dan Herschlein
Valentin Hertweck
Benjamin Alexander Huseby
Monika Paulina Jagoda
Stephan Jung
Vytautas Jurevicius
Renata Kaminska
Saman Kamyab
Brenda Ann Kenneally
Kinga Kielczynska
Lisa Kirk
Martin Kohout
Marcus Knupp
Ulrich Lamsfuss
Cary Leibowitz
Hanne Lippard
Mahony
Katharina Marszewski
Darrin Martin
Rachel Mason
Howard McCalebb
Kazuko Miyamoto
Bob Mizer
Erik Niedling
Hugh O’Rourke
Joel Otterson
Rob Pruitt
Johannes Paul Raether
Annika Rixen
Matteusz Sadowski
Salvor
Dean Sameshima
Pietro Sanguineti
Fette Sans
Wilken Schade
Jason Seder
Barbara Sullivan
Gwenn Thomas
Goran Tomcic
Rein Vollenga
Jan Wandrag
Fresh White
Tara White
Norbert Witzgall
Carrie Yamaoka

This is Exile's final exhibition project in Berlin before re-opening in a new location in New York's Lower East Side in September.

Link to Facebook Page
Link to "This is Exile" Page 
 

Animated Architecture presents: Glass House, an outdoor, dual projection video art installation by Daniel O'Neill, curated by Sean Stoops.
WHEN: Thursday - Saturday May 8-10, 8pm - 10pm each night

LOCATION: North Leopard St. just above East Girard Avenue.  The video projections will be visible from the Girard El train platforms and other nearby spots on street level, such as the Seven Eleven.
facebook event

In 'Glass House,' video artist Daniel O’Neill presents an invented "x-ray view" of a private home. Two site-specific animated video projections depict imaginary scenes on the top floor exterior walls of the building's deck. The video projections will be visible right after sunset, from the nearby Girard "El" train stop (as trains leave and enter the station) from the north side of the platforms.The project explores privacy and voyeurism in a dense urban community. The inside view is based on memories of the artist’s own childhood home. Nostalgia for a familiar place is projected on the urban landscape.

Animated Architecture: 3D Video Mapping Projections on Historic Philadelphia Sites is a festival of site-specific, outdoor/indoor video art events, usually held at night and screened at various Philadelphia buildings, opening in fall 2013. In spring 2012 Animated Architecture was named as one of thirty-five art project award winners to receive grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as part of its Knight Arts Challenge, which funds innovative projects that engage and enrich Philadelphia’s communities. www.animatedarchitecture.org

HEART'S GYMNASTICS Curated by Yevgeniya Baras in NY

HEART'S GYMNASTICS 

EJ Hauser, Melissa Brown, Erin Lee Jones, Yevgeniya Baras, Jackie Tileston, Anna Schachte, Fabienne Lasserre 

Curated by Yevgeniya Baras

Opening: Sat May 31, 6-9 PM

Exhibition Duration: Saturday, May 31-Sunday, June 29th

Oupost

1665 Norman St,

Ridgewood, NY 11385

(Halsey Stop on the L Train)

(Please see the list of other exhibitions I am in below)

"HEART'S GYMNASTICS"

EJ and Yevgeniya had breakfast and talked about Gymnastics. 

Yevgeniya Baras: Heart’s Gymnastics is risking by taking the heart places where upon first consideration it should not go. When looking at work I am interested in someone who is consistently pushing themselves.

EJ Hauser: This makes me think about the fact that I admire artists who are able to be vulnerable, which is a huge requirement to make good work. If you don’t risk something, the return is not going to be the same as if you say: ” I am willing my heart to go places it shouldn’t or knowing it shouldn’t be going there and still willing to do it.”

EJH: A figure doing a back flip in my painting comes from a reoccurring dream I have when I am standing with you in my dream, we are talking, and I am like: “Hey Yevgeniya, look at this and I jump up in the air, flip, and land back on my feet. Then when we think about dreams being in touch with words: “Do back flips” is an expression. “I did back flips over that painting”, for example, or “head over heals”.

YB: I think this idea of gymnastics as an activity most of us don’t usually do but it’s a stand in for a kind of emotional and intellectual stretching; a flexibility.

EJH: It has been said, that a good artist has to be willing to be naked in public. And when we think about the idea of subject matter and content, you have to be willing to put something out there and know that the meaning that someone else gets out of the work belongs to them, and that could be frightening. You have to think about how your broadcast is being received. 

YB: How much great music, theater, amazing art has been misread? What kind of revolutions have certain cultural products caused that they were initially not encoded to cause. They were picked up by other people and their needs.

A Painting, a sculpture, a song, throws up a mirror for you to consider your own experience.

EJH: One may fear to do heart gymnastics.

YB: But the only studios I am actually interested in is where we will talk about color pink but then we will talk about your mother. 

EJH: One of the first things you said about the artists in the show have in common is that it’s about your appetite, for what you want to see, what you want to be contextualized with, your experience of the contemporary conversation and I think that this idea of the flexibility of the heart. There is a great song by McGarrigle sisters : “Heart like a Wheel”. The line is: “You can bend it but you can not mend it”. The wheel runs a little off kilter because it has been harmed a few times. I think there is something really beautiful in your belief in the heart, your belief in the flexibility of the heart and the necessity of the heart being able to take you places. 

YB: Thank you. It is learning to be awake.

Other exhibitions I am in:

"By Invitation Only" 

Kinz + Tillou Fine Art

Opening: Tuesday, May 20, 6 - 9 pm 

59 Cambridge Place
Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Curated by:

Renee Riccardo, Mickalene Thomas, and Andrew Gori

"Meanwhile, Back at The Farm" : 

Suzanne Goldenberg, Maria Britton, Shanna Maurizi, Clare Grill, Yevgeniya Baras, Mike Olin
Opening: Friday, May 30, 2014

195 Morgan Ave

Bushwick, NY

Curated by Melanie Parke and Justine Frischmann

Group Exhibition
Honey Ramka
Opening: Fri, May 30, 2013
56 Bogart St.
Brooklyn NY 11206

Penn MFA Thesis show in Vienna! Opening Tuesday, May 27th at the Franz Josef Kai gallery space

Penn MFA Thesis Show in Vienna, Austria - May 26th-June25th

Philadelphia Connection
»an ocean in between the waves«
young art positions of the Penn MFA program

Laura Bernstein, Carousel, 2014, Newsprint, papier-mâché, cardboard, Dimensions variable 

Press Conference: Monday, May 26, 2014 10.30 am 
Opening: Tuesday, May 27, 2014, 6 - 10 pm 
Venue: FRANZ JOSEFSKAI 3, 1010 Vienna 
Duration: May 28 - June 25, 2014 
Monday - Saturday, 2 – 8 pm (closed on Whit Monday) 

FREE ADMISSION 

(Vienna/Philadelphia, May 8, 2014) The idea that travel forms an integrative feature of artistic 

praxis and creates an essential component of both experience and knowledge production, 

comprises the conceptual origin of the exhibition. In particular, a change of place in the 

paradigm of a globalized cultural geography contributes to the broadening understanding as 

well as the relativization and even the transformation of one’s own work. 

With the move from places of origin to new social and cultural contexts, different conditions 

automatically cause shifts in meaning-making, a process in which local conventions of reception 

also play a role. 

From this paradigm, the young artists from the interdisciplinary Fine Arts Department at the 

University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia developed an independent model for presenting 

their latest work. For six months, they collaborated with curator Roland Schöny, and created an 

exhibition that fundamentally differs from any conventional student showcase. 

 We acknowledge that the artists have produced a large volume of work that embody 

discursive densities and represent a variety of visual strategies. Nevertheless, rather than 

merely displaying already finished works, the artists both selected individual pieces through a 

dialogic process and created new works according to the physical layout of the gallery space. 

As such, the project is situated in a transitional zone that lies between an institutional 

dependency and a continuation of the experimentation with articulations of form. Therefore, 

the exhibition space at FRANZ JOSEFSKAI 3 is the stage. 

Although the group of young artists from the Penn MFA program consider themselves 

personally connected through the production of internal alliances and collaborations that allow 

for critical confrontations and mutual exchange, the difference in their approaches through 

photography, video, painting, or performance, is significant for their work. In parts the art 

scenes of New York influences many of the artists. At the same time works manifest the 

narratives of actual pop culture such that the viewer can discover the sediments of filmsettings 

or specific class and gender codes as embedded in fashion. Some works raise personal 

questions regarding the reconstructions of political history while others visually interpret 

transculturally shaped forms of personal memory and biographical narratives through the 

media of photography and video. The experiences of migration and origins, from Santiago de 

Chile or Tehran, for example, influence such processes. Other artists explore the sense of 

emancipation through the theme of urban space as a field of action. While transmedial 

strategies are conspicuous throughout the exhibition, only few works focus on one visual 

format. Moreover, the potential of the gallery space has been questioned in many ways. As 

such, the artists open the architectonic features of the gallery’s interior space to the outside 

through visual links, which oftentimes reflects their political and critical consciousness. 

After MFA students participated in similarly structured exhibition projects that took place in 

Los Angeles and Berlin in 2013, this group of 13 students decided for themselves the location 

of this year’s show after receiving a mandate. Among their many options, they finally decided 

on Vienna as an approach to a significant European center of contemporary art. 

Artists: Marie Alarcon (*1978 Rhinebeck, NY), Laura Bernstein (*1987 New York City, NY), 

Claire Bidwell (*1988 Los Angeles, CA), Anthony Bowers (*1984 South Bend, IN), Sam Mapp 

(*1985 Chicago, Ill), Scotty Menesini (*1975 Pittsburgh, PA), Mohammadreza Mirzaei (*1986 

Tehran, Iran), Theo Mullen (*1979 Denver, CO), Evan Nabrit (*1982 Columbus, OH), Daniel 

O'Neill (*1979 Providence, R. I.), Maria Paz Ortuzar (*1985 Santiago, Chile), Gordon Stillman (*1984 

Poughkeepsie, NY), Joshua Zerangue (*1988 Lafayette, Louisiana)

Curator: Roland Schöny teaching position at Digital Arts Department of University of Applied 

Art Vienna, structured a public art programme as a permanent cultural initiative of the city of 

Vienna 2004 - 07, realized exhibitions in cooperation with ICA in SOKOL Moscow (2014), at OK 

Center for Contemporary Art Linz (2002-04) or Künstlerhaus Vienna (2000). As author 

cooperations with Centre Pompidou, Vancouver Art Gallery, Kunstmuseum Luzern or TBA21. 

On Saturday, 24 May 2014 from 2 until 7 pm the artist Laura Bernstein roams with her 

performance "Finding The Fall" streets in the inner districts of Vienna (a parachutist in search 

of the causes of landing here). 

The opening will take place in cooperation with Projektraum Viktor Bucher, Prater Street 13/1/2, 1020 

Vienna (Finissage of the exhibition "Dance with us", www.projektraum.at). 

  

Exhibition Participants 

Roland Schöny, Contemporary Art Curator and Author, Vienna 

Joshua Mosley, Professor and Chair of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania 

Ken Lum, Professor and Director of Undergraduate program, University of Pennsylvania 

The artists will be present. 

Press Conference: Monday, May 26, 2014 10.30 am 

Opening: Tuesday, May 27, 2014, 6 - 10 pm 

Venue: FRANZ JOSEFSKAI 3, 1010 Vienna 

Duration: May 28 - June 25, 2014 

Monday - Saturday, 2 – 8 pm (closed on Whit Monday) 

FREE ADMISSION 

Information http://www.pennmfathesis.com 

Contact for inquiries Roland Schöny 

roland.schoeny@artfile.at 

+43 664 815 61 14 

Penn MFA Program 

The Master of Fine Arts program at Penn is focused on the professional development of visual 

artists. Through workshops, seminar courses, international residency opportunities and 

interactions with curators, writers and artists, the program provides an open intellectual 

framework to foster independent methods of artistic research. In addition to seminars within 

the Fine Arts department, graduate students are encouraged to pursue topics of science and 

the humanities through an impressive selection of courses offered across the university. 

Download the PennMFA Program Catalog 

http://www.design.upenn.edu/files/PennDesign_MFA_Catalog.pdf 

For program inquires, contact: mfa@design.upenn.edu or (215) 898-8374 

http://www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts/graduate 

A Celebration of Terry Adkins to be held Monday May 19th from 6-9pm at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse - RSVP Required.