Exit Strategy at White Box, Opening Reception Tonight
10 Jun
The VCUarts Department of Painting + Printmaking presents Exit Strategy
Recent MFA Alumni, at White Box, New York. Friday June 10 – July 7, 2011, Opening Reception: Friday, June 10, from 7:00 – 9:00 pm
WHITE BOX: 329 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002, 212.714.2137, info@whiteboxny.org
Hours: Wednesday to Friday, 11am – 6pm, Saturday and Sunday, 12pm - 6pm, Monday and Tuesday, closed
An Exit Strategy, from within to outside, engages a willingness to consider all options.The 15 young artists in this exhibition embark upon their careers in this time of uncertainty—from economic to environmental. They have engaged one another intensely, with determination, wit,and resourcefulness—for two years as they pursued their Masters degree in the department of Painting & Printmaking (a unique environment where two subject areas coincide) at Virginia Commonwealth University. They have rigorously redefined their practice as artists, in the arms of tough love that is good graduate study.
Their work—signposts of a century’s coming of age. Among those included are Seth Alverson’sunsettling paintings that charge seemingly mundane fragments with uneasy malevolence. Theresult is hauntingly seductive—probing the American sublime. Wes Friedrich’s anachronistic DIYmaterial constructs are at once banal and infuriating – under the skin of melancholic society.Jonathan Marshall’s practice engages his quest to know the limits of life—both figuratively andmetaphorically, whilst Yi Sheng contends with the complex psychology of displacement throughperformative action and re-mediated experiments.
This hybrid gathering of styles and forms is curated for this exhibition by Nigel Rolfe, artist andVisiting Professor, Royal College of Art, London. These are reflections of the contemporary, butbigger questions too of place and context–what seduces us, what terrifies us, and how we mightlive—forming an Exit Strategy.
Participating Exit Strategy artists are: Seth Alverson, Nicole Andreoni, Leah Beeferman,Catherine Brooks, Janet Bruhn, Genesis Chapman, Hon Eiu Chen, Michael Kennedy Costa, WesFriedrich, Luther Kroman, Jonathan Marshall, Kristen Rego, Yi Sheng, Keith J. Varadi and LanaWaldrep.
