Advanced Master Remix
Advanced Master Remix
ICP-Bard MFA 2015
Curated by Joanna Lehan
A group exhibition of the ICP-Bard MFA Program in Advanced Photographic Studies class of 2015.
Opening Reception: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 | 6 – 8pm
Exhibition: July 7th–30th
Advanced Master Remix features work selected from the solo thesis exhibitions of the 2015 graduates of ICP-Bard’s MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies, as well as recent work, and new, site-specific installations. This remix highlights the multidisciplinary work of these artists, for whom the photographic image is a starting point, though not always the endpoint.
Photography today is the torrent that carries us, and a language we all speak. Undertaking “Advanced Photographic Studies,” then, is a more complex endeavor than ever, and the work of these newly-minted MFAs represents the new ways in which the image can be interrogated and reinterpreted.
Artists: Esther Boesche, Stephanie Colgan, Joseph Desler Costa, Marie Louise Omme, Kat Shannon, Marisa Sottos, Daniel Terna, Jessica Thalmann, Beau Torres, Kimberly J. Wade & Tracie Williams
Esther Boesche (b. 1980, Bremerhaven, Germany) is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture, installation and photography. Her series, “Five Heads,” comprises “portraits” of her clay sculptures. These uncanny visages represent memories of archetypical vagabond or criminal characters from children’s literature, and play with conceptions and traditions of the photographic portrait.
The work of Stephanie Colgan (b. 1970, WI), engages with memory, as well as disruptions of the mythic image of family and domestic life.
Joseph Desler Costa’s (b. 1980, PA) work concerns the overlap of maleness and consumer culture. Many of his works, like Nine Laptops, 2014, are seductively colorful, in-camera experiments with objects of mass production.
The work of Marie Louise Omme (b. 1990, Silkeborg, Denmark) concerns itself with growth, entropy and transformation. In her video Break.Sculpture, 2015, a nocturnal experiment with mass, force, and velocity, produces magical results.
The photography, video and performance work of Kat Shannon (b. 1991, FL) addresses our craving for intimacy as well as our discomfort with it. In her wry video, Speaks Over Men, 2014 Shannon transforms mundane conversations with guarded strangers to reveal our shared vulnerabilities. Obsessive photographic portraits of her girlfriend, as well the video, Exchange of Nourishment, 2014, in which the two perform, speak to the passion and tension of interdependence.
Marisa Sottos, (b. 1990, NJ) is a photo-based artist and vocalist whose work interrogates romantic images of femininity, particularly as they relate to opera and popular music.
The exhibition includes a selection of photographs from the series “We Buy Gold,” by Daniel Terna (b. 1987, NY) which depicts windows in New York’s Diamond District. Denuded of their wares during Rosh Hashanah, the abandoned displays evoke the cultural legacy of Eastern European Jews in New York, as well as the history of street photography. Art Handler, installed in the gallery’s window, is a contemplative examination of the labor and craft of art exhibitions, contrasted with the polished spectacle that museum patrons enjoy.
The recent work of Jessica Thalmann, (b. 1988, Toronto) is informed by the Brutalist architecture of her native city, and its relationship to violence, trauma, and memory. Utopos, 2015 is a site-specific photographic sculptural installation constructed of intricately folded photographs. For Thalmann, the fold is a metaphor for the complexity of memory and images, providing multiple perspectives on an image at once
The work of Beau Torres (b. 1989, GA) explores the traditions of still life and assemblage, as informed by online culture. On July 7th, Torres will perform New New Photography 2.0 with Beau Torres, a demonstration of the aesthetics of contemporary image making informed by the expositional style of painter Bob Ross. In his 12-min video, Brush Against Me David; it is what it is, 2015, on view at Baxter Street at CCNY, utilitarian shop objects are arranged and rearranged a tragic and erotic balletic performance.
Kimberly J. Wade’s (b. 1976, NY), Ima Pear (For Trayvon, Eric and Michael), 2015 features the fanciful doodles of her 14 year old, Lance, and channels the fear of American parents for their black sons.
Tracie Williams (b. 1976, NM) is concerned with social justice and the aftermath of war, and has traveled broadly as a photojournalist. The photographs she made while perusing her MFA— sites from the American road, as well as home and family—are more internal, yet still reflect her restless, peripatetic practice.