UCSD University Art Gallery
Presents ‘MFA 2010’

May 18, 2010

By Sheena Ghanbari

Nineteen graduating artists from the University of California, San Diego’s department of visual arts will be exhibiting their work at the University Art Gallery June 4 through July 2.

The work on display represents a culmination of a rigorous three-year studio practice in the Master of Fine Arts program and ranges from performance art and installation to painting, photography and sculpture.

The “MFA 2010” exhibition artists are Shane Anderson, Rich Bott, Crystal Z. Campbell, Lili Chin, Ted Chung, Leigh Cole, Monica Duncan, Chris Head, Glenna Jennings, Merve Kayan, Vincent Manganello, Dolissa Medina, Charles G. Miller, Jesse Mockrin, Zac Monday, Louis Schmidt, Tim Schwartz, Rachel Thompson and Claire Zitzow.

There will be an opening reception June 3, from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Performances start at 6 p.m.

The University Art Gallery is on the west end of Mandeville Center at UCSD. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public. Information at  858-534-2107 or uag@ucsd.edu.

More about the gallery: http://universityartgallery.ucsd.edu.

About the artists:

Interested in how land is viewed and utilized, Shane Anderson allows the viewer to shape the landscape with his portable one-person camera obscura. Rich Bott combines personal messages typed on vintage telegrams with large prints of generic scenes of suburban life – on which he draws with charcoal – that are humorous critiques of middle class consumerism. Crystal Z. Campbell’s installation is part of a series of works that investigate the ambiguity of ritual and uses fantasy to rupture the space between a celebration and an act of violence. Working with a professional dancer, Lili Chin’s video piece explores the framed psychological space of the subject through movement, lights and music. Ted Chung’s site-specific cardboard tables respond to the work of his fellow graduates and play with notions of portraiture, color, time and space. Wanting to create work conceptualized entirely in fantasy, Leigh Cole reproduces a Michelangelo’s “David”using marshmallows and plays on our sense of reverence and commerce. Monica Duncan’s video is derived from her experiences in Community Emergency Response Team training where she became interested in the parallels between training and rehearsal, improvisation within a limited duration, maneuvering through complexities of scale and makeshift rescue objects. Chris Head’s work, heavily involved in established and emerging technology, focuses on the intersection of software design, games and art practice. Glenna Jennings’ work relates directly and tangentially to cheerleaders, guns, bearded men, working class spas, the subtle intricacies of identity and the shifting definitions of Space and Place. Filmed in a small Turkish coastal town on the Aegean Sea, Merve Kayan’s film aims to document the season in which life takes a break from the rest of the year and transforms itself into something different, in some other place, yet remaining intact with its own set of rituals. Vincent Manganello’s colorful large-format paintings pull from sources such as fashion, decorative arts and design to create seductive images that are both unstable and overwhelming. Dolissa Medina combines found footage to create a film/”docu-legend” about the life and death of the Tejano music singer Selena Quintanilla and her impact on the music industry for future Latino singers. Charles Miller operates as an artist/researcher leveraging aesthetic practice as a means for evaluating, measuring and critiquing the illogical operations within our lived urban historiography. Jesse Mockrin paints portraits of young successful corporate workers from New York City. Vulnerable and disheveled, these subjects find no authentic postures, as they appear to have lost command of their bodies within the space. Combining crocheted masks and hands with drawings of royal subjects, Zac Monday’s installation builds on his interest in exploring rituals and the forced interactions that challenge our comfort level and expose our emotional sensibilities. Louis Schmidt’s drawings are part of an ongoing critique of personal and societal unhappiness. Pulling from the New York Times archives, Tim Schwartz’s sculpture uses analog gauges to illustrate America’s preoccupation with specific terms over the last 158 years. Rachel Thompson’s feature-length film essay follows a quixotic search for the material traces of Java’s colonial, mystical, and paleontological past: a journey that shuttles between Amsterdam, London, Jakarta and the District of Columbia. Based on the 2009 Angeles National Forest fire, Claire Zitzow combines backlit photos of the burned mountainside with a 16mm film documenting the burning of paper she made from charred yucca fiber and ash to the nature of irreparable changes in our environment and our perceptions of those changes.

Media Contact: Sheena Ghanbari, 858-822-7755 or sghanbari@ucsd.edu