Out of the Underground: UNM Juried Graduate Exhibition

Juror’s Statement The compelling works of art selected for this year’s Annual Juried

includes painThe compelling works of art selected for this year’s

Graduate Exhibition demonstrate the creative output of the

Annual Juried Graduate Exhibition demonstrate the creative out-

University of New Mexico’s Department of Art and Art History.

put of the University of New Mexico’s Department of Art and Art

Two distinguished jurors—Harmony Hammond, acclaimed artist

History. Two distinguished jurors —Harmony Hammond,

and Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona in Tucson,

acclaimed artist and Professor Emeritus at the University of

and Charles Lovell, Director of Art at the Harwood Museum of

Arizona in Tucson, and Charles Lovell, Director of Art at the

Art in Taos—carefully reviewed submissions and chose 27

Harwood Museum of Art in Taos—carefully reviewed submis-

artists for the exhibition. This year, the jurors have awarded the

sions and chose 27 artists for the exhibition. This year, the jurors

Friends of Art Prize to Tara Zalewsky, the Florence Henri Prize to

have awarded the Friends of Art Prize to Tara Zalewsky, the

Karl Hofmann, and the Ana Mendieta Prize to Christine Chin, all for

Florence Henri Prize to Karl Hofmann, and the Ana

outstanding performance. Reflecting faculty areas of specialization and students’ preferred modes of production, the exhibition

—Laura Steward Heon

Jonson Gallery of the University of New Mexico Art Museum March 23-April 27, 2007

Amy Cliser Carter Carrie Cooper Nicole E Danti Mark Geil Karl Hofmann Erin Emiko Kawamata Jessica Kennedy Larry Bob Phillips Masumi Shibata Jennifer DePaolo Van Hor n

Jennifer DePaolo Van Hor n Ana Mendieta Prize

Larry Bob Phillips Florence Henri Prize

: 08: Amy Cliser Carter

Carrie Cooper : 09:

: 10 : Nicole E Danti

Mark Geil : 11:

Karl Hofmann : 13:

: 14 : Erin Emiko Kawamata

Masumi Shibata : 15:

Jessica Kennedy : 17:

April 7-May 12, 2007

Eloisa Guanlao Jenna Kuiper Joseph Mougel Min Kim Park Robert Rainey Cristina de los Santos Kevin Wesley

Joseph Mougel Friends of Art Prize

: 22: Eloisa Guanlao

Jenna Kuiper : 23:

: 24 : Min Kim Park

Robert Rainey : 25:

Cristina de los Santos : 27:

About the 13th Annual Juried Graduate Exhibition The compelling works of art selected for this year’s Annual Juried Graduate Exhibition demonstrate the creative output of the University of New Mexico’s Department of Art and Art History. Distinguished juror—Laura Heon, Director of Art of Site Santa Fe in Taos—carefully reviewed submissions and chose 27 artists for the exhibition. This year, the juror has awarded the Friends of Art Prize to Joseph Mougel, the Florence Henri Prize to Larry Bob Phillips, and the Ana Mendieta Prize to Jennifer Van Horn, all for outstanding performance.

Reflecting faculty areas of specialization and students’ preferred modes of production, the exhibition includes painting, printmaking, drawing, and photography, as well as ceramics, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Some works are more personal and esoteric in nature, while others make lucid political statements. At times humorous or ironic, at other times challenging or disturbing, the work remains appealing, provocative, and timely. The exhibition’s range and sophistication underlines the talent and the vision that this program’s faculty, student body, and staff possess and exercise on a daily basis.

—Patrick Manning, Assistant Professor of Photography

: 28: Kevin Wesley

JOSEPH MOUGEL Friends of Art Prize

Hole, 2006—video 02:31 Up Down, 2006—video 02:47 The Field, 2006—video 01:43 Photography BFA: University of Georgia MFA Committee: Joyce Neimanas, Adrienne Salinger, Jim Stone, Laura André Coping with war or even serving in the military are not experiences many artists share. Reconciling military service with the potential ramifications of the armed forces on others is undoubtedly difficult. Joseph Mougel’s Friends of Art award winning video works offer a glimpse into one man’s personal expression of war and his own history in the armed services.

However, to pigeonhole Mougel’s work as political would oversimplify its content. There is a powerful sense of sincerity in the videos. Mougel acts as the main character, dressed in army regalia. The scenarios that play out before the camera are teeming with eerie yet humorous metaphorical content.

Up Down offers a beautiful view of an arid, mountainous landscape. At first this environment appears devoid of human life. But Mougel abruptly interrupts the serenity of the scene, popping up from behind a shrub and then quickly hitting the deck. More and more identical figures appear throughout the landscape. Reminiscent of shoot ‘em up video games, the cadence increases as more clone figures spring up, sprint and hide from view. Taking on the role of a live target, Mougel puts himself in harm’s way, forcing viewers into the role of the hunter. Mougel gives a nod to the “game of war” through satire in this videogame style scenario. The real life video imagery creates an uneasy tension between lighthearted games and the grave ramifications of genuine combat. By shifting the character of benign onlookers to predators, Mougel reveals his vulnerability and forces us to reexamine the consequences of our role as outsiders.

While Up Down looks from the outside into what it might feel like to be a soldier, other videos suggest the internal struggles within a soldier’s life. Hole depicts a surreal white

salt flat, its expanse of featureless earth stretching for miles.

Pictured in the foreground is a perfectly round hole, cut into the landscape. Everything is still except the sound of blowing wind. After a long period devoid of any action, a lone soldier emerges from the hole. After a brief, sober pause he slinks back into the bunker and the world is calm once again. This meditative piece conveys a powerful sense of isolation.

In his videos, Mougel produces humorous overtones by embellishing sound effects, by creating a spectacle of multiple clones, and by popping out of a perfectly cut hole in the ground. While these captivating details create an immediate engagement with viewers, prolonged viewings provoke a contemplation of the powerful undercurrents within the work.

—Andrew Crooks, MFA Candidate, Photography J E N N I F E R D E PA O L O V A N H O R N Florence Henri Prize

Three on a Shelf, 2006 Porcelain, stain, glaze, 4"x 6"x 5" 3D/Sculpture BA: Houghton College of Liberal Arts MFA Committee: Gina Bobriwski, Jim Jacob, Bill Gilbert, Kirsten Buick The sculptures of Ana Mendieta Prize winner Jennifer dePaolo Van Horn embody a sense of play and affection. The pieces in her collection Three on a Shelf convey a notion of toy, while at the same time expressing her attention to detail and her interest in biological forms. Each creature has its own personality, its own posture and curiosity. They are made of porcelain, with some parts painted and the rest left the unglazed texture of the clay. The small scale and fragile medium of the sculptures convey their vulnerability, and they become precious objects.

One resembles a turtle that grew too many legs. It sheds its shell (or grows it?) in small fragments that cover the golden skin below. The tiny pieces of clay that make up its shell suggest a budding growth, not unlike cells dividing. The animal becomes an emergent life force, multiplying the customary number of limbs and magnifying the process of growth and development into a visible layer of cells extending over its

back. Yet the innocent, inquiring gesture of its head renders this little monster harmless.

Another creature, though missing a head, boasts a surplus of knobby arms and legs jutting out at every angle. The appendages seem to be growing longer in segments, all of different lengths radiating from the animal’s torso. The animal appears to be ambling along, though a bit awkwardly due to its variety of leg lengths. Van Horn’s suggestion of ungainly motion in her sculpture implies a puppyish romping that is endearing in its clumsiness.

Appearing to lack a rigid skeleton, the third sculpture’s body consists of three hollow cylinders. The animal’s tubular structure suggests a torso and legs that fold into a crease delineating the animal’s bottom. Ideas of tube worm and sponge and baby converge in Van Horn’s creation. Its hybrid quality evokes the ancestral relationship among all living things, a connection that exists even between organisms as diverse as worms and people.

Each piece in Three on a Shelf is unique and endearing.

The bright colors that adorn the sculptures make them highly visible, even though the sculptures themselves are small. The variety of forms that comprise each figure, as well as the textures patterning the porcelain surface, encourage touching and handling. Van Horn intends for her sculptures to have this appeal.

Like little alien dolls, the creatures look unfamiliar even to each other, but each possesses a distinct, appealing persona.

—Cynthia Brinich-Langlois, MFA Candidate, Printmaking LARRY BOB PHILLIPS Ana Mendieta Prize

Drawing One, 2006 Drawing Two, 2006 Drawing Three, 2006 Colored pencil on paper Drawing and painting BFA: Kansas City Art Center MFA Committee: Jim Stone, Adrienne Salinger, Patrick Nagatani, Laura André, Joyce Neimanas While genetically modified (GM) foods have been available

since the 1990s, they remain indiscernible because regulatory agencies refuse to require labels that identify GM products.

As such, many Americans remain unaware of both the benefits and risks associated with creating and consuming GM foods.

Enter artist Christine Chin, whose Genetically Modified Foods Cook Book and video, The Genetically Modified Foods Kitchen with Chef Chin, seek to stimulate awareness of these little-known food technologies. Viewers who come to Chin’s work seeking a technological explanation of GM foods and their attendant issues will have to look elsewhere for this information. Instead of dry exposition of the GM debate, Chin parodies the familiar family cook book and cooking show to bring transgenic foods out of the closet and onto the table.

The success of Chin’s parody rests on her understanding of the aesthetics that make cook books a profitable industry.

Each page of The Genetically Modified Foods Cook Book is splashed with the kind of glossy colors and food styling that turn simple recipes into pornography. Close inspection of the images and ingredients reveals some intriguing surprises; the curiously titled recipe for Garrulous Gazpacho, for example, requires five or six mouthy tomatoes and a package of earsprouts, along with the usual suspects of garlic, basil, and lemon juice. Discovery of these unusual ingredients induces all the revulsion usually accorded to cannibalism; however, Chin’s skillful creation of these frankenfood props, and her masterful command of the cook book aesthetic lexicon make it impossible to turn away. Instead, the viewer is compelled to flip further into this gastronomic nightmare, at once seduced by the slickness of each layout and shocked into an increasing discomfort with uninformed, casual consumption.

The video format of The Genetically Modified Foods Kitchen with Chef Chin helps bring the hallucination of such foods as finger carrots one step closer to reality. Working in a sumptuous test kitchen, the sight of Chef Chin delicately slicing the tips from these carrots, reserving them for garnish, retains all the homey comfort of a late Saturday afternoon PBS cooking show, but with the added twist that the end product is no more consumable than the viewer’s own hand.

Despite their stealthy ability to induce thought about the serious issues surrounding GM foods, The Genetically Modified Foods Cook Book and accompanying video are undeniably funny. The dark humor of cooking with body parts is not of the knee-slapping variety. Rather, the cook book and video cause an uneasy chuckle rooted in the perhaps not-so-far-fetched fear that nippleberries and totatoes may soon be coming to a grocery store around the corner.

Jonson Gallery of the University of New Mexico Art Museum March 23-April 27, 2007 : 08: AMY CLISER CARTER

: 11: MARK GEIL

: 14: E R I N E M I K O K A W A M ATA

516 Arts April 7-May 12, 2007 : 22: ELOISA GUANLAO

: 25: ROBERT RAINEY

SPECIAL THANKS THE JUROR LAURA STEWARD HEON

Director/Curator Site Santa Fe Santa Fe, NM PROJECT SUPPORT

Untitled, 2006 Mixed media, 3.5"x 13"x 1.5"

Swords for Your Body, 2006 Archival pigment print, 16"x 16"

3D/Sculpture BA and MA: Marshall University MFA Committee: Basia Irland, Lydia Madrid, Joyce Neimanas, Laura André To construct visual narratives, Amy Carter combines symbolic objects that hint at enigmatic relationships. Though motionless, these functional found objects allude to mechanical roles. They connect to other materials by suggesting channeling, shoveling, hoisting, supporting, cranking and containing, all metaphors for more meaningful ties.

Photography BA: The Evergreen State College Swords for Your Body evidences the time between the sixth month and eighth month of life on Earth for the Extra Terrestrial. This is the point where hard luck and reversal of fortune become plain to see. By means of photographic inquiry, Mark Geil is interested in the emotional climate of alienation and the failures of genuine affection.

: 09: CARRIE COOPER

: 13: KARL HOFMANN

Untitle, 2006 Digital prints, rice paper, graphite and thread 20"x 5" Photography BFA: San Jose State University MFA Committee: Jim Stone, Steve Barry,

Patrick Nagatani, Joyce Neimanas, Joyce Szabo When Erin Kawamata is asked, "What are you?" she divides herself into sections physically and mentally. It gets messy. How does she create one whole again? She attempts it through words and images. "What are you?"

She is a woman. She is human. She is whole.

: 15: M A S U M I S H I B ATA

Photography BFA: Indiana State University Jennifer Nehrbass dismantles the mainstream portrayal of women. Her focus on fashion and consumerism places her female protagonists in psychological, perverse narratives.

: 10: NICOLE E DANTI

Painting and Drawing BFA: University of Michigan MFA Committee: Jim Jacobs, Joyce Neimanas, Adrienne Salinger, Kirsten Buick Karl Hofmann creates works that are composed of a variety of material adhered to the walls and floors and suspended in space. He uses detritus from his studio, cheap fabrics and mass-produced junk to “render” a composition both in two- and three-dimensions.

Through experimentation with material, space, and iconography, Hofmann explores new perspectives of composition.

3d/Sculpture BA: Carleton College MFA Committee: Steve Barry, Basia Irland,

Joyce Neimanas, Kirsten Buick “…we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation…”

: 23: JENNA KUIPER

Untitled, 2006 Painting, 12"x 12"

Untitled, 2006-2007 Found material, Variable dimensions Untitled, 2006 Untitled, 2006 Untitled, 2006 Chromogenic print, 42"x 62"

Reframing Progress: Science, Art and Empire, 2006 Aluminum, transmission Hologram, modern tintype, plexiglass 12'x 11'x 15'

Untitled, 2006 Clock, 12"x 12" Photography BFA: Utah State University MFA Committee: Michael Cook, Joyce

Neimanas, Mary Tsiongas, Kirsten Buick Masumi Shibata dismantles the mainstream portrayal of women. Her focus on fashion and consumerism places her female protagonists in psychological, perverse narratives.

: 17: JESSICA KENNEDY

Painting and Drawing BFA: Utah State University Masumi Shibata dismantles the mainstream portrayal of women. Her focus on fashion and consumerism places her female protagonists in psychological, perverse narratives.

: 24: M I N K I M PA R K

Spoken, 2006 20'x 10' Video and Sound Installation

Two Way, 2006 Duratrans in light boxes 2'x 2' Photography BFA: Rhode Island School of Design MFA Committee: Adrienne Salenger, Joyce Neimanas, Jim Stone, Laura André Two Way explores notions of class, race, gender and sexual identity. Rainey pairs himself with one other person. The overall effect is that of a series of couples. Rainey is exploring the inherent dichotomy within a pairing of subjects. Thus the title, 'two-way'.

L-Word, 2006 Vinyl, pleather, felt, wool, cotton,plastic, thread 35"x 62" Untitled, 2006 Felt, ribbon, thread 51"x 20" Painting and Drawing BA: Adams State College MFA Committee: Steve Barry, Constance

DeJong, Jim Jacobs, Kristen Buick These works explore formal concerns (color, presentation, relationship and perception).

Nicole Danti recommends taking a second look.

Untitled [yellow-green], 2006 51"x 51" Untitled [violet], 2006 60"x 36" Untitled [grey], ten parts, 2006 8.5"x 7.5" Mixed media on canvas Photography BFA: University of Michigan The process of making paintings is integral to their meaning. They are a record of the energy, material, time, and tedium of their creation.

Joyce Neimanas, Joyce Neimanas, Ray Hernández-Durán Spoken focuses on the mouth as a source of communication and as a source of sexual, sensual, dangerous and threatening associations. The teeming, violently clinching mouths in the image evoke multiple disembodied voices echoing their frustrated attempts at communication and self-expression. This work creates a signified space for the articulation of an assertive female subjectivity.

Graduate Art Association, University of New Mexico Graduate and Professional Student Association, University of New Mexico University of New Mexico Friends of Art of the University of New Mexico Art Museum

: 27: CRISTINA DE LOS SANTOS

JONSON GALLERY STAFF

Cave, 2006 13'x 5.5"x 4" Space, 2006 13'x 6.5"x 5.5" Coastal, 2006 13'x 5.5"x 4' Mixed media on paper

516 ARTS

Painting and Drawing BFA: University of Texas at Austin

Stacked landscapes, pools, foliage, atoms and signals squirm around in two dimensions and communicate eccentrically with the viewer. They stretch out across a vast space on canvas and paper to create a rare sense of place.

: 29: KEVIN WESLEY

Photography BA: St. Louis University MFA Committee: Mary Tsiongas, Steve Barry,

Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico

Preditor, 2006 48"x 30" Watering Hole, 2006 44"x 30" Archival digital print Painting and Drawing BFA: University of New Mexico MA: University of Hawaii MFA Committee: Mary Tsiongas, Michael

Chip Ware, Curator Shelley Simms, Administrative Assistant Megan Barber, Museum Aide Sandi Ludescher, Museum Aide

516 ARTS is a nonprofit, museum-style gallery in Downtown Albuquerque, presenting collaborative programs with museums and organizations in the region and beyond. 516 ARTS is made possible in part by the generous support of McCune Charitable Foundation and many New Mexico businesses including Bank of Albuquerque, BGK Group, Charter Bank, Coldwell Banker Real Estate, First Community Bank, First National Bank of Santa Fe, Goodman Realty Group, Grubb & Ellis, Heritage Hotels & Resorts, John & Jamie Lewinger, J.T. Michaelson, Mosher Enterprises, New Mexico Bank & Trust, New Mexico Business Weekly, Paradigm & Company, SG Properties, Stewart Title of Albuquerque, Sunrise Bank, and Technology Ventures Corporation. For more information, please visit www.516arts.org.

GAA WISHES TO THANK Joyce Szabo Holly Barnet-Sánchez Patrick Manning Chip Ware Thanks are also extended to the catalogue production team: Cynthia Brinich-Langlois, Sam McFarllen, Joseph Mougel and Robert Rainey.

Contact Jonson Gallery: Cook, Kathleen Jesse, Kirstin Buick Kevin Wesley reflects on human behavior and email: jonsong@unm.edu web: www.unm.edu/~jonsong how it sets us apart from other species. Our environmental impact on the planet is certainly one distinguishing characteristic. His prints Printed by Colorado Printing. address the double-barreled problem of ram- ©2007. All rights reserved. pant consumerism and corporate imperialism.