2020 MFA Studio Arts Exhibitions

I began the process of creating my MFA thesis exhibition Analog Interface by revisiting some of my personal histories and researching some of the histories of glass. In conjunction with a material investigation into the optical qualities of glass, this research has informed the formal choices, subject matter and content of the work. As a result, Analog Interface is largely comprised of a collection of functional glass objects that offer communicative opportunities to my audience. Through the work, I want viewers to relate to each other in new ways. More broadly, my aim is that the remnants of these encounters will incrementally augment the sense of compassion that’s held within our collective consciousness.

My current body of work deals primarily with the way that I interpret and interact with the idea of place. This inquiry is shaped through personal experiences of travel and a lack of rootedness to a particular geographical location. The work features images taken from five different cities that I have either visited or lived in in the past six months. Treating the surface of the ground as a constant, I establish my perceptions of place through the lens of mobility. Instead of depicting the post-card aspects of the places that I experience, I am drawn more to the representation of features that typically go unnoticed. The ground, with its immensity of detail and aesthetic allure, serves as an appropriate subject matter for that exploration.

While the work is predominantly about place, it also addresses other concerns. The idea of disintegration and decay that alludes to the passage of time is visible in most of the pieces. The brokenness of tiles and asphalt on the ground surface points to the connection between nature and the built environment and the way the two coexist, or the way one may encroach on the other. It is indicative of the essential vulnerability of the built environment. Cultural allusions are also prominent in most of the paintings. These allusions or references to particular cultures that I stumble upon during my explorations represent the individuality and character of a particular place and the diversity of cultural dimensions. The work also speaks about the manipulation of ground at the hands of human beings and the prints that they leave behind on earth. Through the act of construction and of leaving behind traces indicating their presence, people constantly alter the places they inhabit. These records of movements or instances of manipulation allow the viewer to read the ground as a palimpsest of experiences and expressions.

The formal choices I make are also meant to enhance the understanding of the work. The tones, colors, and precise mark making are choices that act in concert with the subject matter. There are areas of the painting where the brushwork is muted and almost invisible and areas where it is swifter and looser. Sometimes, the gesture of the hand is easily discernable, and at other times it is almost imperceptible. The use of multiple glazes allows for an illusion of depth that is impossible to achieve with direct painting. All in all, the rigorous process of executing each painting is indicative of a deep commitment to the ostensibly simple surface of the ground. Some depictions of place are life-size, while others are either enlarged or shrunken. Some surfaces are depicted as perpendicular to the viewer’s line of vision, while others offer a subtle shift in perspective. These variations serve to prevent the emergence of a fixed pattern in the way that the viewer moves from one piece to the next.

At this point in time, the ground holds my interest more than any other visual phenomenon. Gazing at the fractured skin of the Earth heightens my sensitivity to the passage of time and urges me to pay attention to the communicative potential of visuals that usually go unnoticed.