MFA THESIS EXHIBITIONS 2012

Lea Bult

Urban Vessels: The Complexities of Slavery

For many, slavery elicits an image of an antiquated era. When contemplating slavery, people tend look back at history with a feeling of repulsion for what was considered a barbaric and inhumane time. These thoughts are often followed with feelings of pride for the progress that has been made since those times. Unfortunately, slavery and human trafficking are still persistent. Many of the objects we encounter in our daily lives were in some way touched by forced labor. People are enslaved for various reasons, throughout the world and within our own communities. Some are hidden from our gaze, and others are hiding in plain sight.

By integrating photography and collage techniques, I create paintings that appear opaque from a distance, yet hidden elements within the composition appear when the viewer steps in for a closer look. These hidden figures are placed within various urban vessels, set into seemingly mundane urban scenery. To create this effect, I paint onto Plexiglass, leaving strategic sections of the composition transparent. The figures are installed some distance behind the transparent sections; making them appear as if they are held within the containers they are placed in. In this process I intend to physically mimic our complicity to this problem. If we choose to step in for a closer look, the opportunity for intervention becomes tangible. We can act or choose to look away.

Exhibition Dates: March 9 - 20
Opening Reception: March 9 7:00 - 10:00 pm
Jean Paul Slusser Gallery

Reed Esslinger

Per^form at Boundary

September 18, 2006: Stifling humidity demands I shift my attention to by body. Pores dilate, pupils restrict, jaws clench, preventing thoughts from forming into words… Upon my first encounter with Réunion Island excitement was soon enveloped in layers of apprehension, fear, and confusion. I had arrived on the shores of this volcanic spec in the Indian Ocean belonging to France’s colonial legacy, hoping (romantically) to transcend cultural barriers. I wanted to soak up as much as I could around me: vocabulary, odors, street smarts, and for a time was willing to loosen my grasp on my own world view...

I view ethnographic fieldwork as a balancing act between two vying forces: on the one hand is a desire for intimacy while professional purpose demands perspective and analysis. I am not an ethnographer but I am intrigued with the mission: to expose oneself, to analyze an “other,” and to translate the experience to a third entity. The ethnographic text attempts to unify objectifier & objectified into a document that endures time and bridges physical, cultural, and spiritual distance.

This installation spans six years, permeates three spaces, and unwinds the multitude of threads vesting the question of belonging. Social acceptance is a state of being we all strive for: to be understood, to be valued, to be part of the fabric of a collective story. As circumstances abrade, erase, or constrain the human psyche we respond creatively: adapting, rewriting, and emerging with a transformed sense of self.

Exhibition Dates: March 9 - 24
Performers are present at posted times, 1-2 hours each day, for the duration of the exhibition.

Receptions: Part I: March 9 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Part II: March 24 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Warren Robbins Gallery

Emilia Javanica

Red Blob Massacre

Maddy Blitz is a young woman with horrendous-looking teeth. Maddy’s nightmares of not fitting in clump together to form a giant RED BLOB that confronts her tormenters, eventually growing so big that it...

A silent horror film and live performance. For further information, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Film and Live Performance: April 5 and 6, doors open at 7 pm, show starts at 8 pm
Cavern Club, 210 South 1st St. Ann Arbor

John Kannenberg

Hours of Infinity Part I: One Hundred Hours of Infinity

The solitary acts of drawing and listening are inextricably linked; they observe and record each other.

The works in One Hundred Hours of Infinity were created via a rigorously imprecise drawing method coupled with a disciplined approach to sonic observation and documentation. These self-constructed activities merge with elements of classical Egyptian and Greek philosophies, mindful meditation, and proofs from contemporary mathematical theory to investigate the beautifully absurd imperfection inherent within the human experience of the Infinite.

Exhibition Dates: March 9 - 25
Opening Reception: March 9 7:00 - 10:00 pm
Work•Ann Arbor, Basement

Hours of Infinity Part II: Twelve Hours of Infinity: Amduat

The works in Twelve Hours of Infinity: Amduat were created via a rigorously imprecise drawing method coupled with a disciplined approach to sonic observation and documentation. Depicting a series of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the drawings in this exhibition take the Amduat as their inspiration, an ancient text depicting the journey the sun takes during the twelve hours of night time before being reborn each morning at sunrise. These cyclical drawings investigate the beautifully absurd imperfection inherent within the human experience of the Infinite.

Exhibition Dates: March 9 - 25
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

Hours of Infinity Part III: An Hour of Infinity

Museums collect physical objects; might they also collect the active sounds of history over time?

For one hour, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology will host a site-specific performance scattered throughout its galleries that combines a rigorously imprecise drawing method, musical compositions based on specific objects in the museum's collection, and digitally manipulated sounds of the museum itself. Their relative stasis will convert this collection of live performers and sounds into living, breathing, sonifying museum objects. Audience members will be encouraged to stroll through the museum observing these sonic objects, personalizing their experience through their own choices and interests; this unconventional sonic situation will explore the beautifully imperfect sense of timelessness experienced by traditional museum audiences.

Sound Performance: March 23 6:00 pm
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Upjohn Exhibit wing

Amanda Lilleston

Animal: What Makes Us Human

Animal is a series of woodblock print collages that investigate what makes us human and keeps us alive. These works probe the complex interplay of tissues that keep our diaphragms contracting and hearts beating. This is a compilation of information from watching surgeries, dissecting cadavers, reading physiology books, and speaking with anatomy researchers. The fantastical forms in this exhibition are human parts—susceptible to gravity, discomfort, decay, growth, and adaptation.

Exhibition Dates: March 9 - 20
Opening Reception: March 9 7:00 - 10:00 pm
Jean Paul Slusser Gallery

Yuan Ma

Perceptions

The Salvation Army thrift store is an incredibly interesting place to me, where uncountable objects overwhelm my eyes. The chaotic arrangement in the space always stimulates my imagination and makes me continuously fabricate daydreams. It is not a typical place for making art, but I still find the beauty of it and decided to locate my thesis studio practice inside the store.

At the very beginning of my project, I wanted to use objects and the store environment to create videos that represent paradox phenomena. Later on, I found that what was really interesting was how people perceived my works in the thrift store environment. I talked to customers who consciously or subconsciously stopped in front of my work. I found their responses were so different than the academic world. Their opinions were so organic and straightforward, which made me start to think, “Are works considered as art only if they are put in the galleries? Do average people really need or care about Art? Actually what is Art? Can we really define Art?” I failed to answer these questions. Instead, I decided to listen to people.

My video works are containers. I use them to collect different perceptions from people. There will be a book complement the video series, where I will include responses from customers who have seen my work in the store.

Exhibition Dates: March 10 - 24
Opening Reception: March 10 5:00 - 10:00 pm
Salvation Army, 1621 S. State Street

Collin McRae

Your Cadence

Your Cadence is a show composed of a large-scale installation on the ceiling of the gallery, as well as one interactive video piece. Both pieces playfully undermine one's normal sense of perception. The main installation is designed to be viewed by looking down into a hand-held mirror, which creates the illusion that the ceiling is actually the floor. The viewer is meant to explore this new space through the mirror, walking across the freshly surreal ground. Hand-drawn animations greet the viewer from "below" in this new topography, creating a more personal platform to view film. The viewer cradles her/his own frame, curating one's own intimate experience with the animated material, which offers abstractly narrative visual poems stemming from studies of gesture and transfer of information across space (between bodies) or across time (through archival and other historical material).

By effectively flipping ground for the sky, Your Cadence creates a unusual situation, but a welcoming one. Incorporating audio that exists somewhere between repetitive speech and orchestral compositions, the show comes from questions about the ways in which we navigate the world, record the world, call upon our own embodied knowledge, and look to one another to (mis)communicate about both our interior states and externally shared problems.

Exhibition Dates: March 16 - April 1
Opening Reception: March 24 7:00 - 10:00 pm
Work • Ann Arbor

Meghan Reynard

Outpost

Outpost is an installation exploring the tenuous grounds of perception in the remote wilderness environment. Built as a room within the gallery, the interior hut-like space is damp and dim, lit only by light emanating from crevices found within the walls, floor, and ceiling of the space. The crevices mysteriously transcend the apparent architecture of the hut, extending deeply through the walls, ceiling, and floor, evoking wonder and fear through an encounter approaching the sublime.

Outside the hut, adjustments to lighting and shadow, and collections of artifacts and data attempt to describe the experience of remote isolation in nature, marking place, conditions of environment, and qualities of human experience. These remnants and suggestions of the experience stand in contrast to the encounter within the hut, indicating the discrepancies between the phenomenological encounter with the sublime in nature and the carefully calculated abstractions that attempt to describe it.

With an attention to light, this work brings the audience into a more intimate awareness of their own observation and understanding of physical phenomena. Outpost extends the boundaries of our inhabited world, the perceptions we may have of it, and the means by which we make sense of it.

Exhibition Dates: March 10 - 30
Opening Reception: March 10 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Work • Detroit

James Rotz

Kibbutz of Desire: The Chosen Place to Raise the Final Tent

Strange that all of a sudden an expression should come up like that, one that has no meaning, a kibbutz of desire, until the third time around it begins to take on some meaning little by little and suddenly the expression doesn’t seem so absurd any more, like a sentence such as: ‘Hope, that lush Palmyra,’ a completely absurd phrase, a sonorous rumbling of the bowels, while the kibbutz of desire is not absurd at all, it’s a way of summing up closed in tight this wandering around from promenade to promenade. Kibbutz; colony, settlement, taking root, the chosen place in which to raise the final tent, where you can walk out into the night and have your face washed up by time, and join up with the world, with the Great Madness, with the Grand Stupidity, lay yourself bare to the crystallization of desire, of the meeting.

Exhibition Dates: March 9 - 20
Opening Reception: March 9 7:00 - 10:00 pm
Jean Paul Slusser Gallery