For Immediate Release
April 26, 2012
Contacts: Jewell Watson,
301-405-2763 or jwatson4@umd.edu
2012 Masters of Fine Arts Thesis
Exhibition welcomes six candidates at The Art Gallery
May
10, 2012 – May 25, 2012
COLLEGE
PARK, MD. – University of Maryland’s The Art Gallery proudly presents an exhibition
showcasing the work of six Master of Fine Arts candidates from the Department
of Art Masters of Fine Arts program. The works exhibited by this year’s 2012 MFA Exhibition candidates Selin Balci, Michael Booker, Felicia
Glidden, Pete Karis, Adam Nelson, and Alex Peace represent the culmination of their studies and their
artistic development during their time at the University of Maryland. Below are
extracts from the artists’ statements, highlighting the philosophies and
methodologies involved in creating their work:
Washington
D.C. based installation artist, Selin
Balci, uses simple living organisms in her artwork. Balci applies an acute
scientific laboratory practice to create her art works where she is constantly
discovering and combining the scientific material and mediums. Her work is
process-based and is focused on interactions and transformations.
Growing up in a family
of quilt makers, Michael Booker’s
investigation of quilt making has led to the abstracting of its’ ideals to cross the line from craft to fine art.
By breaking it down to its' simplest
form, fragments of memories, he is able to use the language of quilt making to reflect on issues and experiences
that occur within families and communities.
Felicia Glidden dreams
in vivid color. Her thesis installation Divination
Method fractures light and space on a permeable architectural sculpture. By
projecting images through paper and steel inside of a soundscape, this work
explores the unseen as clearly visible. She incites metaphor as divination,
memory, and the internal landscape. Her research involves journaling dreams,
and roaming Europe and the US looking at art and icons of Mary. The sound score
evokes the mystery of visitation and pilgrimage through a series of dream
narratives.
Pete Karis looks
at the process of art making as a type of evolution of thoughts, ideas,
techniques and outcomes. While most of his work has been kinetic or machine
based, he now uses those machines and ideas to generate new work that is not
entirely kinetic. His artwork is influenced by living in areas where industry,
wastefulness, and the destruction of architecture impact every aspect of life.
While these concerns are a starting point, his work generally incorporates
these influences with humor and an air of absurdity intended to act as a
counterbalance of the more serious connotations that can be interpreted.
Adam Nelson
uses plastic materials, light, and heat, to fabricate installations of erratic
energy. As vehicles for the transfer and exchange of matter and energy in the
world, tumultuous phenomena occur naturally or through human agency with
infinite degrees of scale. Their aftermath brings about a sense of leveling in
terms of their physical and cultural impact. By emulating characteristics of
instability within the confines of the studio, he is able to exploit the
mildness of controlled space with fixed volatility.
Alex
Peace is an artist who believes in painting the
moment when the historic and the autobiographic collapse within a
single frame. He is driven by the creative process as well as
his practice of research into the antiquity of objects and the
effects of their authenticity.
The
public opening reception for 2012 MFA
Thesis Exhibition will be held on Thursday, May 10 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The exhibition will be open to the public through Friday, May 25, 2012. The Art
Gallery will be open to the public on Monday, May 21 during the University of
Maryland’s various commencement ceremonies. The Art Gallery is located at 2202
Art-Sociology Building on the University of Maryland College Park campus.
Please visit www.artgallery.umd.edu or call 301-405-2763 for more information.
