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| | Cardsharper
February 27 - March 14, 2009
Reception: Thursday, March 5, 6 - 8pm
School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “Cardsharper,” a thesis exhibition by students in the MFA Fine Arts Department. Curated by Lauren Ross, interim curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.
This exhibition gathers an eclectic mix of sixteen artists who work in painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, video and performance. “Cardsharper”- or “cardsharp”- is a nineteenth-century term for a person who habitually cheats at cards. (Over time, the idiom morphed into today’s more commonly used “card shark.”) While the designation was originally coined as a pejorative, its usage broadened and softened to describe a player with superior skills, or one who uses those talents for entertainment purposes. The playful and mischievous nature of the exhibition’s title suggestively refers to some of the interests shared by this diverse group of artists, including game and role playing, interactivity, humor, rule breaking and just a touch of sleight-of-hand.
Some of the students investigate simultaneous structure building and breaking, as seen in the painterly and graphic canvases of Samuel Adams; the inflating and collapsing sculptures of Trish Tillman; razed buildings abstractly painted by Noa Charuvi; the found and subtly modified objects of Áslaug Friðjónsdóttir;; and deconstructed bodies culled from celebrity photos by Jin Kyoung Bom. Others inspect fraught interpersonal relations, as in Rebecca Goyette’s video showing a woman’s dysfunctional attempts to seduce a male dummy; a pair of videos by Habby Osk in which a handshake between businessmen goes awry and two women face off in a competition for dominance; or Stacy Scibelli’s wearable fabric constructions that envelop and threaten to trap their wearers.
Some works explore physical interaction and desire, such as Tre Chandler’s drawings of men copied from fashion advertisements and pornography; Zoe Chan’s use of optical illusion to create paired words with such contradictory messages as “touch me” and “back up;” Amber Boardman’s drawn animation documenting physical therapy, as well as her audio and video pieces that appropriate messages left on her voice mail, which examine the self through the acknowledgment of others; and Brandon Davey’s sculptures that tease out notions of balance and intimacy between people and objects alike. Other works allow quiet and extended contemplation of the quotidian, such as Paul Limperopulos’ drawings with text and breath which evolve and disappear to explore the passing of time; Kathleen Mallaney’s videos documenting various performances; Alejandro Guzman’s drawings of people and shrines examining the nature of the hybrid; and Curver Thoroddsen’s video in which he mimics an award show acceptance speech to mark the occasion of his thesis presentation and graduation.
Lauren Ross is the interim curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She has curated over one dozen exhibitions featuring the work of emerging artists, predominantly at White Columns, where she served as director/chief curator from 2001 - 2004. Ross has written for exhibition catalogs published by White Columns, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as for magazines including Art in America, Art on Paper and the Brooklyn Rail. She has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Whitney.
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| | Visual Arts Gallery
601 West 26 Street, 15th floor
New York,
NY 10001
212.592.2145
The Visual Arts Gallery is SVA's premier exhibition facility. Located in Chelsea on the 15th floor of the landmark Starrett-Lehigh Building, it comprises four state of the art galleries and a large terrace with a commanding view of Lower Manhattan and the Hudson River. Staffed by six full-time professionals, Visual Arts Gallery offers select students the opportunity to exhibit and sell their work in the same environment as some of the country's leading artists--a number of whom have exhibited there as well.
Since the Visual Arts Gallery moved from 137 Wooster Street in Soho to its present location in 2004, it has exhibited works by renowned SVA alumni such as Renee Cox, Inka Essenhigh, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Lazzarini, Sol Lewitt, Vera Lutter, Elizabeth Peyton, Alexis Rockman, Collier Schorr, Lorna Simpson and Sara Sze, Works by Richard Avedon, Milton Glaser, Anish Kapoor, Stefan Sagmeister, Sebastiao Salgado have also been exhibited at the Visual Arts Gallery.
SVA students of every discipline derive great educational benefit from being able to study the work of celebrated artists, hear them speak at lectures, or even get the chance to meet them in person -- all right here at the College.
The Visual Arts Gallery is open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and is closed Sunday and federal holidays*. The gallery is accessible by wheelchair. For more information, or to purchase student's work (the gallery takes no commission), please call 212.592.2145.
*Summer Hours: The gallery will be closed for the
Independence Day holiday weekend from Friday, July 2, 1pm through
Monday, July 5. June 4th
through August 20th, 2010, the gallery will be closing one hour earlier
on Fridays (5pm instead of 6pm).
For press inquiries, please call the Office of Communication at 212.592.2010 or email proffice@sva.edu
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