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A group show of Arielle ANgel, Derya Hanife Altan, and Nicholas Dowgwillo, with a poetry reading by Rachel Harkai, June 25-July 26, 2007.
Derya Altan
People tend to resist changing their set ideas about the world around
them. In my work, I try to get people to reassess and challenge their
pre-conceptions by playing with the common standards of time and
scale. In my design work, I alter my audience’s sense of size by
minimizing or enlarging various conventional proportions. Along with
creating new shapes, I play with the viewer’s visual sense of time by
limiting her ability to place my work in a specific period through the
use of unexpected materials, embellishments and silhouettes that
reference the past and future all at once. In my video work, I rewind,
repeat, speed up or slow down, zoom-in tight, or catch an unexpected
use of light to convey an alternate narrative. By offering a different
way of seeing things, I challenge my audience to change their way of
thinking and to engage in a questioning dialogue not simply about art
or design but about all aspects of their lives and the world around
them.
In new projects I have cited for this year, my goal is to refocus on my
interest in inciting change though challenging preset conventions .I am
excited to apply the benefits of design’s dialogue with the user to
fine art’s emotional, visceral way of conveying ideas. Specific
projects I hope to complete include works that will exaggerate the
scale and shape of the human body to drastic degrees, suspend time
through creativing installations the audience can walk around and
experience for extended periods of time, and projects that play with
ideas of place and time trough involvings traditional patterns and
motifs executed in crafted in non-traditional materials and colors.
In perhaps the largest project I am looking to undertake, I am excited
to apply my thesis to my own life. I am open to changing my physical
environment and experiencing the effects on myself and my creative
process. The supportive environment I hope to find in Spartanburg will
provide what I need to meet these goals for perpetually challenging
myself and others around me.
Arielle Angel
These 23 icon paintings reflect a completed series, executed from 2006-2007.
In 2005, I moved to Greece temporarily. I was immediately
fascinated by the role the Greek Orthodox iconography plays in the
lives of the Greeks. They are treated not as paintings, but as an
actual presence. The people interact with them differently than one
would with a work in a museum or a gallery; to them, the icons occupy
the space that a live person would. They surrounded themselves with
the icons in their homes and public spaces, as well as the religious
spaces.
I observed this at a time in my life when I was increasingly
frustrated with the direction of art and it’s inability to relate to
the average person. I was seeking a more “useful” art, something that
could create a presence, as opposed to a disconnected picture.
However, I was also wary of simplifying or watering down my ideas, and
my basis in conceptual art-making practices, just to satisfy a
sometimes lazy audience.
In Santorini, I met an icon painter who briefly demonstrated his
process. He explained that icon painting, though straightforward in
its readability, is actually the first example of conceptual art, as it
is not the person being depicted, but the idea of the person. It took
centuries to refine the iconography so it reflected the exact mythology
surrounding the saint, with only a few carefully considered signifiers.
It became clear to me that icon painting was the consummation of
everything I had been searching for in my own work.
Back in the States, I began appropriating the Greek Orthodox
aesthetic to examine the relationships in my own life. I am a highly
sentimental person and I tend to keep my friendships for very long
periods of time, often defining myself in relationship to them. I
began setting up photo shoots with my friends and family. Sometimes I
would approach the person with an idea, and sometimes they would arrive
with their own, but most of the time, the photo shoot became a
synthesis of the way I viewed the person and they way they wanted to be
viewed. The aim and the result is an almost Platonic view of the
person—the way they exist timelessly, in my mind, as ideas. And the
icons hold this power.
Nicholas Dowgwillo
My paintings and mixed-media works on paper are lyrical responses to
the disjuncture between the transcendent and the mundane. I use an
open blend of figurative and abstract elements and (often) extreme
asymmetrical balance, leaving large areas of the paper essentially
empty, to create tense, fragile spaces that oscillate between
transmuted image and inert material. This conflation of bliss and
simplicity has at its core the impulse to glean joy and meaning from
the commonplace and the desire to express the sadness of a spirituality
disconnected from the ordinary.
The friction of this opposition also operates as a function of process.
The grinding, routine labor of creation mirrors the transfiguration of
dull material. More often than not, the work of an artist is
monotonous, yet there is as much meaning in those gray hours as the
moments of fleeting ecstasy. Labor grounds the work in reality.
I have recently begun to use images of bulls and flowers in my
pictures. Beyond the obvious gender content (and overtones of sexual
power) of this imagery, I am interested in it as a way to express the
brute force of emotional vulnerability and as a way to convey the
connection between mud and the sky. They are metaphors for labor and
ecstasy.
In my work I seek to expose the poetry and drama of these apparent oppositions and the blanket wholeness that unites them.
Rachel Harkai
Perhaps it was the shift into a new environment that inspired me to
create a piece of art more tangible than simply a collection of poems
to be read aloud. Suddenly surrounded by visual artists and their work,
I embarked on the process of putting my words into a more visual format
that I ever had before. Most of my first three-weeks here at Hub-Bub
was spent hand-binding my first series of chapbooks, titled
Myrmecology. These small books ultimately represent the completion of
many months of researching, writing and revising a collection of poems
rooted in the world of ants. And on the gallery walls, both as a part
of a collaborative book-project with my fellow artists-in-residence and
by themselves, you can find my poems. All of these pieces - the
chapbooks, the pages from our collaborative book, The No-Friends Club,
and my poetry based on the art of painter Egon Schiele - explore the
space where visual art and literary art overlap.
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