potluck - final crit

jaclyn
red velvet cupcakes
homemade guac

eliot
box of coffee

anna
milk/cereal

rashayla
macNcheese!!!

mickleburgh
salad

caputo
vegan food

soo
oranges

ayesha
pizza

tyler
cheese/crackers

david
surprise :(

chrisP
rice n beans

lazarus
hummus/pita

hayden?
brianK?

Haydens Statement

Suffocating behind steel bars in a cold cell, my images lay stagnant, trapped in the static energy that exists between tragedy and comedy. While life wanes, the final whimpers are heard as veiled tears, or was it muffled laughter? As breath awkwardly leaks into the distance, so does the ability to laugh or cry. Unworthily plummeting into a lethargic coma, one last attempt is made to reach beyond the cell, only to discover what lies beyond the bars is nothing more than a brick wall, snuggled up against the steel cage. Life and hope simultaneously vanish and the bowels release a surge of shit, allowing for a final attempt at a shameful laugh.

great blog by Randall Szott

touches on some of the things we've been discussing in class recently:
http://randallszott.org/

Statement

ayesha saeed : 2013

artist’s statement:

Possibilities are what I see around me and in the photographs I take. The repetition and the monotony around us have special moments and when I happen to stumble upon on any one of those moments then that space becomes a possibility for a photograph that I make.

It all started with epiphany I had at the Art Institute of Chicago with Dutch Modernist Theo Van Doesburg’spainting Counter Composition VIII.

The experience was so quiet, and so satisfying. I can only describe it as if I was suddenly liberated from some vast decimal system; a sense was granted that there’s more to what we see around us. I moved through space and deconstructed my habitual vision.

I realized, that a square is a very important to me One of the reasons because it’s not biased. It gives each side of it an equal importance and contains a space that is secure, sacred and feels very much my own. It’s like that I can create anything in that square and it will be safe. It is like a window for me to the space of that possibility that Idiscover. Like a stage where I can analyze, perform and experiment.

Visually, I have tended to be more of a micro- than a macro- person. I often get so immersed in a subject and magnify it so much that it becomes hard for me to look at it from a distance.

The possibility I find in a photograph is worked up to a level through various methods like collage, digital manipulation and video until I find it abstracted enough where it’s taking me somewhere.

The writings of Agnes Martin, introduced to me by a professor, really helped me to trust these strange-seemingintuitions, moments and to explore them.

I’ve come to understand my work as a process of actually refining awareness. It is about the quietness of the repetitive patterns of our daily lives. It has its unique rhythm which I hear everywhere around me. I see strange systems of chaos and order around me; the beauty of monotony, yet the complexity of it at the same time. The pieces seem to allow me to focus, but then again push me back again so I can see from a distance: the tension of micro and the macro.

Revised Artist Statement

My current artistic practice primarily consists of photographs that illustrate disconnections, displacement, (un)familiarity and distortions that personally relate to me, relationships and past experiences.

My work is an exploration and study of subconscious emotional triggers that are evoked when I re-experience specific objects or settings that I can firmly recall. These psychological occurrences consequently allow me to more closely examine what emotions drive me to such an extreme sense of dislocation.

I’m interested in the observation of the past, present, and the discovery of what has transpired in between. In this sense, my photographs function as tangible documentation of scenes that have prompted my response or mental reaction.

haydens short statement

Again, this statement is a roughish one, but i do feel like im beginning to get at something, something that i think ive had a hard time describing or understanding myself.


Right now it is difficult for me to come up with a statement I am satisfied with, if satisfaction with a statement is even possible. My work exists within a constant state of flux, in between the bounds of tragedy, and comedy, yet those words are maybe a little too dramatic for my liking. Rather, my photographs exist in a world of static energy, yet the energy is neither positive nor negative. Lately I don't know whether to laugh or cry. At everything, yet at nothing. Both are short lived. They are just the continual climax that will soon plummet. Plummet into what they are when combined: nothingness. A canceling out of any sort of semblance.

My work is about the canceling out. It is nothing, yet it is everything.

It is the release of shit after death.

Artist Statement

My work is fundamentally a study into the correlation of the individual agent and organizational systems. The question of what substantiates being has long been a philosophical inquiry but the proliferation of a digitally networked culture now demands significant reappraisal of the metaphysical subject. Participating in communication (electronic or otherwise) decentralizes interiority as language has the tendency to rearrange cognition, shaping sensation and knowledge into the exterior mechanics of semiotics. This condition is only intensified within contemporary media landscapes, these vast immersive environments of information, signals, channels, and noise.

As a form of response to this paradigm, my work revolves around the dialectical relationship of self and system and how these two entities synthesize with or repel one another. This is a foray into true experience and its mediated counterpart, magical existences in and through machines, an affect bred through technology and the emergence of a cybernetic hero.

for ayesha

i didnt read all of this, but i saw this and thought of Ayesha. especially the photograph "Within and Beyond the Frame"

http://bareface.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/daniel-buren-stripes-here-there-and-everywhere-2/

Garry Winogrand’s John Simon Guggenheim Grant Statement in 1964

I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and how we feel and what is to become of us just doesn’t matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the columnists, some books, I look at some magazines [our press]. They all deal in illusions and fantasies.  I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn’t matter, we have not loved life.

I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue this photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project.

Artist Statement (250) Su

EDIT

A different version. Might be clearer.

I make flat, still, rectangular images – paintings and photographs. They are not generated from a singular idea, nor unfolded as a linear development. Each one comes from a different question. Each one represents a rupture in normality. My work is my own Wunderkammer.

The two-dimensional form holds significance in my work. Just as we understand the world via abstraction, a still image as the most abstract visual form collapses the four-dimensional space-time onto a picture plane. In doing so it creates a dilemma: despite the intention of making sense, imagery generates ambiguity – the problem of representation.

This problem, encountered by many artists and thinkers, is exactly what I desire. We are in a time of great uncertainty, in economical-political structure, in science, in faith, in our future. I feel the need to reflect these doubts in my work. Ambiguity slows down minds, delays actions. Thus the problem of representation is conceived as a battleground between progression and self-reflection, a mark that rejects clarity.

My subject matters cover a wide range of topics, from scientific problems to personal experience. I aim for a representation of life in its every aspect. However, by transforming it into banal images and displaying them together my work becomes a neutral ground stripped of life’s specificity.

Within this negative zone lies hope.


Old version:

What does it mean to make a flat, still image contained in a rectangle or a square, right now? In a time when art forms reach ever closer to real life experience, why turn toward the most reduced, abstract ones, i.e. painting and photography? They collapse experience, thoughts, emotions and knowledge onto a two dimensional surface, creating ambiguity rather than clarity, generality rather than specificity. What is the use of them?

Art is the opium of people. I believe we are in a time of great uncertainty, of doubt, in the economics, the political pictures, science, in our fate – a time for reflection. The flat surface is the perfect ground for this reflection. By potentially negating any specific meaning, the image of a painting or photograph can become an empty slate, tabula rasa, for anybody to project onto. The entire meaning of negativity is enclosed in this exchange between the viewer and the image, this projection. For this momentary pause slows down thoughts and actions, inducing much needed confusion. The desire of knowing and doing is halted.

I put various kinds of images and surfaces together to create a set. The individual pieces can be banal, transgressing or opaque in its subjects. They are drawn from life experience, scientific formulas and philosophical texts, or generated from painting and photographic processes. I aim to negate the specific meaning of each piece in the set as a whole, thus generating a void for the viewer to step into, to be lost within.

ACRE scholarships announced:

ACRE is pleased to announce 2 new scholarship initiatives for 2013 ACRE Residents.

ECHO SCHOLARSHIP
The Echo Scholarship is designed to empower former residents to support incoming residents. A number of alumni-donated works will be available at auction at ACRE Projects (1913 W 17th Street, Chicago) and online (via ACRE’s Facebook Page and Website). The proceeds of the sale of each work will go entirely to an artist who has demonstrated financial need. The alumnus who donates the work determines who is eligible for the scholarship by setting parameters that may be tied to fields of practice, race or ethnicity, age, sexuality, gender or any combination thereof. The scholarship is jointly named after the winner of the auction and the artist who donated work.

The first auction will launch on March 24th and end on April 14th at 9pm CST. Featuring art work by former residents Betsy Odom, Angeles Cossio and Hilary Baldwin, scholarships generated from this auction will go to one female artist who has been out of school for at least 2 years, one oil painter and one artist currently in an undergraduate program.

THE ACRE BOARD GRANT
The newly created ACRE Board Grant generously donated by two board directors, is intended to provide a full 12-day residency for one artist from an under-represented population.

Applicants who indicate financial need on their application will be eligible for these awards. Scholarships are awarded based on financial need, application score and parameters as determined by each scholarship donor.

For 2013 applications and more information about ACRE, please visit acreresidency.org