2011 Hamiltonian Catalog

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description

2011 Hamiltonian Catalog features work from Hamiltonian Artists and a review of the past years accomplishments

Transcript of 2011 Hamiltonian Catalog

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Contentsforeword

hamiltonian artists

introduction

exhibitions

new now 2010

fairy tale meets flesh

proofs and recordings

holding up/going home

bound

2009 fellows

jon bobby benjamin

magnolia laurie

katherine mann

jonathan monaghan

lina vargas de la hoz

2010 fellows

selin balci

jessica van brakle

ryan hoover

joyce y-j lee

elena volkova

contact

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Foreword2011 has been another exciting year for Hamiltonian Artists. Our fellows continue to make their mark locally and internationally through another season of well-received exhibitions and prestigious international art fairs such as SCOPE Miami and NYC. I am especially proud that all of our fellows have risen to the challenge and have received various critical acclaims for their work. Through these experiences as professional artists in notable local and international venues, they have thrived artistically and continue to hone important professional skills, while steadily and confidently moving towards a successful career in the visual arts. Equally important, these exposures have afforded them the opportunity to make invaluable and lasting connections with other galleries, curators, and collectors, that pave the way for their future career path.

From the Hamiltonian home-base, we continue to expand the scope of our professional development services for our fellows and the local art community with talks and workshops ranging from fiscal sponsorship and health insurance for artists to the dos and don’ts in approaching galleries. We have developed a strong following for the Professional Development Speaker Series and hope that it will continue to be an invaluable resource in the entrepreneurial toolbox for emerging artists in the Washington, DC area.

This summer, five of our follows will be leaving our program and continuing onto the next stage of their career. I wish them continuing success in the coming years and I am sure that we will see them again in other high profile exhibitions and art events in the future.

Hamiltonian Artists would not be as successful without the help and expertise from our Board, staff, mentors, External Review Panel, and friends. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them in nurturing our group of incredible fellows. Last but not least, Hamiltonian Artists will not be here without the participations of our fellows. Thank you all in making our 2010-2011 season such a wonderful year.

Paul SoFounder of Hamiltonian Artists

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hamiltonian artists

Background

Paul So, a painter and physics professor at George Mason University, founded Hamiltonian Artists with the vision of creating a comprehensive career development program for emerging visual artists. As a scientist in a highly competitive field, he appreciated the tremendous benefits of his post-doctoral training at the beginning of his career. In the arts, however, similar opportunities for professional growth are rare. After turning an abandoned historic building at 14th and U Street, NW into one of the first green, contemporary art exhibition spaces in Washington, DC, So launched the Hamiltonian Artists. Driven by So’ s entrepreneurial vision, Hamiltonian aims to nurture the next generation of up-and-coming, visual artists and bolster DC’ s burgeoning, contemporary art scene.

The Organization

Founded 2007, Hamiltonian Artists is dedicated to building a dynamic community of innovative, new artists by providing professional development opportunities that further their entrepreneurial success. In partnership with Hamiltonian Gallery, a prominent exhibition space in the heart of DC’s culturally vibrant U Street, the nonprofit pioneers a new support structure to help artists strengthen their professional skills and better navigate the ever-changing landscape of their profession. By combining the strengths and services of a nonprofit arts organization with those of a commercial art gallery, the Hamiltonian venture invests in the next generation of promising artists and forges innovative programming to facilitate their transition into a professional art career. Over time, Hamiltonian has become an essential destination for aspiring, new artists and a vibrant center for emerging contemporary art.

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The Programs

The Hamiltonian Fellowship Program is a critical stepping-stone for emerging, visual artists who have finished their academic training and are beginning their professional art careers. Every year, an independent selection committee chooses five emerging artists to join the competitive fellowship program. Built around a rigorous exhibition schedule, fellows receive one-on-one mentorship from established artists, participate in group critiques and regularly attend professional development lectures. During their two-year tenure, fellows show at international art fairs and receive an annual stipend as well as commercial representation from Hamiltonian Gallery. While enjoying heightened visibility, they engage in an intense dialogue about their work, build active professional networks and stronger professional skills.

The Professional Development Speaker Series emphasizes the business side of the art world. In in-depth lectures and interactive workshops, established artists and art

professionals offer candid insight into the market and practical strategies for success. The series is open to the public and topics recently included: portfolio and presentation reviews; gallery and collector outreach and marketing strategies; business and financial practices; tax advice, as well as artist statement and grant writing workshops.

To make the visual experience and the fellows more accessible, Hamiltonian Artists regularly invites the public to artist talks, panel discussion, curatorial collaborations and other art-related events. By offering strong public programming for the District of Columbia and beyond, Hamiltonian seeks to enrich the dialogue on contemporary art and build a supportive community of new and established art enthusiasts and patrons.

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IntroductionIn this catalogue we review the past year of exhibitions as well as introduce the 2010 fellows and their work. In addition, we asked each 2009 fellow to respond to the questions listed below:

EXPERIENCE: What is the most important aspect for you personally that you gained while being part of the Hamiltonian fellowship program?

CONTEXT: Where does your work fit into or exist outside of the current art world?

HISTORY: What is the art lineage or art-historical background of your work?

IMPULSE: What motivates and informs your everyday artistic practice the most?

DIRECTION: Where is your art taking you?

PROFESSION: If you were not an artists, what profession might you have chosen?

IMPORTANCE: How is your work important to community or the larger context of society?

The BOLD words are used to link the questions to the fellows’ answers printed on the following pages.

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exhibitions

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New Now 2010

After another outstanding year of artist-centric programming, Hamiltonian Artists has selected five new, distinguished Hamiltonian Fellows for 2010 to join our five existing Fellows.

The five new 2010 So-Hamiltonian Fellows were selected from a pool of over 130 very promising applicants this year. Hamiltonian Artists brought together seven incredibly acclaimed art professionals to comprise the External Review Panel. The External Review Panel caucused together, and evaluated every application based on criteria regarding technical merit, originality and relevance to today’s art world. Panelists were also asked to discuss how well they thought the applicant would benefit from the program that Hamiltonian provides.

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Fairy Tale Meets FleshWhether in Monaghan’s digital constructs or Rieck’s masterly-engineered paintings, both artists appropriate the iconographies of storytelling and marketing to question notions of power and subjugation.

Five paintings comprise the series Mead Hall, inspired by the heroic epic poem Beowulf, and The Monsters and the Critics, J.R.R. Tolkien’s consequential 1936 lecture on the literary work. James Rieck deftly arranges cropped images from historical paintings, seductive women, and medieval props to present a contemporary interpretation of the medieval classic.

The soft, predominately gray paint with flecks of glittery mica lure the viewer to further discover an elaborately crafted mythos of castration. Though subtle, Rieck offers us abject bodies of pale skin, fur, fabric, and steel caught in a state of pretension and pose. In the painting Judith, Rieck explores the art historical underpinnings of classical female characters, further convoluting the depiction of sex and violence through the eroticization of death. The thematic depictions of sexy heroes and their slain beasts bring to life female personas, which usurp the previously comfortable role of the masculine ego.

Jonathan Monaghan explores the dialectical nature of an increasingly simulated world with his new work, Life Tastes Good In Disco Heaven. Monaghan’s work ultimately is about indifference and loss, which is illustrated by integrating corporate iconography into pseudo-religious landscapes. His iconic subject matter is both familiar and alien playing on our desires, dreams, and dread. His virtual creations allude to the eerily present dilemma of responsible consumption. By subverting popular commercial culture, Monaghan’s work presents a moral question left unanswered.

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Proofs and Recordings

Volkova explains, “I would like to question the viewer’s perception of real and imaginary space, as well as invite the viewer to contemplate the surrounding and become aware of mundane and often overlooked details of the environment”.

Renee Van Der Stelt has developed what she calls “Recordings” or site drawings by capturing the physical fugitive traces in the landscape such as rotting bark, rain and wind. Van Der Stelt has created an index of her natural landscape by using various elements within that environment as implements for drawing. Evidence of pollen, grass, trees, and algae can be found on her paper, leaving behind analog representations of ephemeral instances.

Elena Volkova, Proofs; and Renee Van Der Stelt, Recordings. Both artists employ site-specificity in their practices by utilizing a given environment to shape the outcome of their work. By analyzing the nature of perception, Volkova has shown light on the viewer while Van Der Stelt has given us beautiful images of nature that illicit a poetic sense of time and space.

With her new series titled “Proofs,” Elena Volkova has illustrated the act of perceiving through site-specific photographic installations. In these installations, Volkova has placed us somewhere in-between the physical space of the art gallery and our own perceived vision of space by drawing attention to “liminal space”, or space in a state of becoming. Through these skewed visions of the banal, Volkova gives us the opportunity to refresh our vision of that which we don’t see, that which is right in front of our eyes.

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Holding Up/Going Home

Both Laurie and Benjamin have employed the politics of place, each highlighting the debris of our throw-away culture, breathing new life into the idle spaces and objects which surround us in an ever-expanding field.

In her new series, holding up, Magnolia Laurie illustrates geometric structures that depict cumulated residual heaps of natural and man-made materials that remain after a storm. Seemingly disordered, her paintings are composed of architectural elements that suggest the engineering of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion as well as the intricate weaving of bird nests. These delicate, precarious systems in Magnolia Laurie’s paintings speak of endurance, survival, the activity of dwelling and “making-do.” Jon Bobby Benjamin’s new work, going home, reflects his physical exploration of the natural world. Benjamin creates sculptural amalgamations of familiar industrial materials and found maritime objects. Consisting of buoys, docks, channel markers, and tide bells, Benjamin creates systems that are seemingly inaccessible and unreadable. These irrational arrangements distill a sense of timelessness, placeless-ness, and solitude.

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Bound

Whether in Balci’s laboratory approach or Mann’s painterly exploration, both artists create vivid abstractions, ripe with notions of growth, wonder and subjugation. Within the context of aestheticism, both examine the limits of their medium, as well as notions of humanity within an expanded ecologic understanding of the living world.

Katherine Mann’s oversized, abstract works on paper consist of accumulations of sequins, paint and ink, which illustrate the potentiality of growth, as well as the peril of overabundance. Mann creates carefully composed fields with articulated moments that are at once chaotic, organized, thriving and decaying. Mann explains, “I think of my work as baroque abstract: a celebration of the abundance of connections and clashes that can be found in the disparate mess of matter in the world.” Katherine Mann elegantly builds her paintings with hoards of ambiguous forms recalling elements found in systems of nature and in the highly-decorative, resulting in a menagerie of depth and color.

By utilizing traditional lab procedures, Selin Balci creates microenvironments by incorporating biological material as a new art media to explore the literal process of life. From sterile beginnings the growth of microbes demonstrate a turbulent arc of life within a largely imperceptible world. Balci’s simple living organisms live and die within a network of biological exchanges highlighting a wide range of behaviors similar to the human equivalent of social exchanges.

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2009 fellows

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Jon Bobby Benjamin

100 years from 100 years ago, wood, paint, rope, swimsuit, 2010

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Canonicus begets the Lily-Whites, digital photograph (hydrocal, astro-turf, tumble-weed), 2009

Vesper Puritanus/substratum forever enough now, digital photograph (hydrocal, aluminum foil), 2009

CONTEXT I think my work fits within a lot of the sculptural and multi-media work that is being produced right now.

HISTORY Artists like Philip Guston and David Hockney had a huge impact on the way I thought about direct imagery in my work. More re-cently, I’ve been looking more at artists like Roxy Paine and Roman Signer.

IMPULSE Most commonly the urge to be making things, coupled with whatever I’ve been looking at, reading about, and thinking about.

PROFESSIONI don’t think being an artist prohibits anyone from being involved in other professions; in most cases being an artist requires people to take on other careers. I taught for a few years right after finishing undergrad, and used to work at a fabrication studio in Philadelphia, and both of those types of jobs really interest me.

IMPORTANCEI hope that my work allows people to experi-ence something they haven’t seen, don’t read-ily understand, or are able to look at and sit with for a moment.

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Magnolia LaurieIMPORTANCEI can’t really say how or why the work should be important to others. For me, the work is how I thread together facts and thoughts about the world around me. It’s a thinking process; thinking through making and making by responding. I am thinking about human nature and human actions, the evidence of our action, the instincts and hope of survival, the notions of human progress civilization and what that looks like, and what that has looked like before. I incorporate references to ideas that I think are interesting and bind them to other ideas, drawing associations through time and space, creating dialogues, jokes, posing possible answers or maybe just more questions. For some paintings or works, the ideas that I’m thinking about are more readily visible, the evidence of my hunting and gathering more obvious and more overtly conversing. For others it is more vague, the connections I’m making more personal in logic or lingering within the potential of being slightly less defined and more evidence of thinking without absolute conclusion. I hope that in either case the work is interesting and resonates on some level with others, though I always think of them as proposals and not arguments.

to swagger and croon, with a little tug, oil on panel, 2010

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he noted, the aesthetic impulse is the second most powerful, after survival, oil on panel, 2010

HISTORY Though I feel no dependence or strict association to any lineage, I think that freedom speaks very much of the various movements and boundaries which have been drawn and broken before me. My work wonders a line between representation and abstraction, and I do love that quick instant that a mark or material hovers between representing something other and then just itself. The work is primarily based in painting and draws a lot on the language of painting.

IMPULSE I would say that it’s the ongoing search for connections. In the studio I need to be alone and ideally alone for a while but in that alone time I seem to spend all my time reading, writing, making, listening, remembering, making, looking, making some more, reading some more, rereading what I read before, adding more and on and on. It’s a sort of ongoing activity, perhaps a little like a bird building nest, and in some ways it is in those moments where I start to see connection between these various point of interest, that I feel the most secure and focused and sure of what I’m doing.

DIRECTIONThe work continues to engage me in thoughts and questions about structure and construction as a stand in for human activity. What is the instinct and motivation behind the structure? What evidence of what psychology or condition of the maker can we gather from structures that we see? Is it ruins and decay or construction in the making? Is it intentional or random? What is it made of and why? What quality of stability does it have? Where is the structure and what emotive quality come from the juxtaposition of the structure and its environment? Are there other structures or codes of visual language that I can pull into the picture to layer and weave ideas and associations together? And so on. These are the sorts of questions running through my head, although often in a less clear phrasing.

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Katherine Mann

Horde, acrylic and sumi ink on paper, 2011

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EXPERIENCEI gained a tremendous community because of the Hamiltonian fellowship program. Upon first moving to Washington, DC from Baltimore, I didn’t have a clear sense of the arts scene in the city, knew virtually no one, and would never have been able to confidently navigate the small but vibrant community here were it not for the foundation provided by Hamiltonian. I’ve made lasting friendships and connections with both Fellows and staff. It’s also been integral to design, install, and critique shows in the gallery space. My work has progressed in the past two years, and I believe that is due to the critical dialogue implicit in this program, as well as the challenge inherent in creating work that is not only gallery ready, but lives up to the promise of the Hamiltonian space.

HISTORY My work is indebted to current trends in abstract painting, traditional Sumi ink painting or Chinese Guo Hua, and lush 17th century still lives portraying overripe abundance.

IMPULSE The process of painting. Every successive step in my painting process is decided in response to the layers of vocabulary already there. I begin each painting by pouring water, ink and liquid paint onto papers as they lie on the floor of the studio. This initial chance operation then informs the rest of the painting process as the stain is then covered and defined by braids of hair, sequined patterns, and repetitive details from costuming and ornamentation. I’m always fascinated to research and find instances in the world of conglomerations of tiny decorative elements, like Gothic churches, Taiwanese Daoist temple roofs, or Beijing opera costumes. I’ve taken elements from each of the aforementioned influences and inserted them into my paintings.

CONTEXT My paintings explore themes of chaos and control, growth, abstraction and ornamentation... all of which are themes that pepper the art world today as artists respond to a world more epic in scale, but also more unstable, layered, and confused. The emphasis on systems and un-pure abstraction are interests shared by many of my favorite artists working today--examples might include Jiha Moon or Matthew Ritchie. But I’ve always attempted to create work that felt both timely and timeless, personal yet touching on the universal. So although I share a similar generational vocabulary with work being shown in the current art world, my paintings will always be individualized and particular to my history.

Calcite, acrylic, sumi ink and graphite on paper, 2010

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Jonathan Monaghan

Dauphin, 3D animated HD film, 2011, 4:52

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EXPERIENCEGoing through the experience of mounting an exhibition was by far the most important part of the fellowship program for me. As a graduate student you learn how to make your work but you never get a real chance to show it. There is stress, pressure and a host of other variables that never even cross your mind in graduate school. I feel very confident now in my ability to put on a successful solo exhibition in the future, and the exposure from the Hamiltonian shows has garnered possibilities for that very opportunity.

IMPORTANCE By borrowing the tools and aesthetics of certain commercial media, I enter a dialogue with something we are saturated with on a constant basis. It is important to explore how pervasive media effects us as individuals and as a society, and I feel that is what my work is doing.

CONTEXT My background is in commercial 3D graphics and I like to think my work blurs the line between it and contemporary art.

HISTORY Computer graphics as an artistic medium does not have historical precedent to be consciousness of as would a painter, sculptor, photographer or even video artist. Instead I engage the histories for all these mediums.

IMPULSEI am very interested in how new media technology shapes the way we perceive reality, politics, history and identity. I feel the best way for me to explore that idea is through making art.

DIRECTION I am not sure where my art is taking me, however I do know I’ll be getting there faster because of the indelible career-building experience I received from the Hamiltonian.

Loving You Is Cherry Pie, looping 3d animation, LCD monitor, laser-cut steel, 2010

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Lina Vargas De La Hoz

Medellín Umzug, Documentation of the performance in Medellin, Colombia. Photography by: Stefan Schneider, 2009

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EXPERIENCE Being a part of the Hamiltonian Fellowship Program has encouraged me to interact with the public more actively through my objects and performances. The affiliation to program has motivated me to build connections with the art community in DC, engage with gallery visitors, other artists, curators, collectors and gallery owners. This is an integral step that every emerging artist must take.

CONTEXTI work with ordinary materials, objects and clothing to explore private and collective space in relation to our society. Like the growing numbers of interdisciplinary artists, I, too, subscribe to utilizing many different mediums. The series of works that I create are experiences with the body, and are often times presented as interactive installations. Clothing is a layer of material that creates a space around our bodies and is a way to communicate social and individual issues. I use the vocabulary of fashion in my work but move beyond nice jackets or pretty sweaters as my objects and installations interact with the public and offer a rich level of identification with place and displacement issues.

DIRECTION I started my latest works as experiments with the idea of object versus space relationships. In the work I try to analyze personal and social issues using the concept of “body architecture” as a starting point. I think there is still a lot to be gained from these experiments and I think for now I will continue to explore ways to talk about location/relocation from an individual perspective. Umbrella Relocation Baltimore, Documentation of the performance Baltimore,

USA. Photography by: Lina Vargas, 2010

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2010 fellows

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Selin Balci

Quorum Sensing, video, 2010, 2:33 min loop

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Jessica van Brakle

Color Blocks, acrylic and ink on panel, 2009Lace Attachment, acrylic, ink, and sewn lace on canvas 2009

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Ryan Hoover

Atlas of Networks: Rectangular Dining Table, cyanotype print, 2010

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Joyce Y-J Lee

Room to See, video installation, 2010, 2:30 min loop

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Elena Volkova

Killing Time Murders Opportunity, graphite on paper, 2010

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ContactFor more information on the Hamiltonian Fellowship Program or to find out more about how you can contribute or donate to Hamiltonian Artists, please cantact us:

Street Address:

1353 U Street NW, Suite 101 Washington, DC 20009-4444

t: 202.332.1116f: 202.332.0569e: [email protected]

www.hamiltonianartists.org

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12:00 - 6:00pm

Contact:

Paul SoFounder and Executive Director of Hamiltonian [email protected]

Jacqueline IonitaProgram Director of Hamiltonian ArtistsDirector of Hamiltonian Gallery [email protected]

Angela GoernerDevelopment [email protected]

Nathan WallaceGallery [email protected]

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Thank YouPanel 2010:Dadi Akhavan Dawn Gavin Rebecca Jones Vivienne Lassman Maggie Michael Jamie L. Smith Ivan Witenstein Mentors:Frank DayJason HorowitzBrandon MorseMaggie MichaelDavid PageJames RieckRenee Van Der SteltJanice Goodman

Interns & Volunteer Staff:Andy ChicasSonya ElefanteJeff HerrityShawna Vacca

Speakers:Seth AdelsbergerCraig AppelbaumLeigh Conner Kathryn CorneliusDebbie HarrisonClaire HuschleNora LockshinJohn D. MasonAdam NataleBenjamin TakisSarah TanguyMaggie Michael

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