Out To Pasture: 2021 MFA Graduation Exhibition

April 02 – May 07, 2021
USF Contemporary Art Museum + Online

ONLINE EXHIBITION

Exhibition Home
//  Introductory Text  //  Virtual Tour  //  Catalogue + Brochure  //  Installation Views  //

Nostalgia & Now
//  Bonnie Mae Carrow  //  JD Hardy  //  Nadia Ivanova  //  Andrés Ramírez  //

Carnal Physicality
//  Chase Palmer  //  Jonathan Talit  //

Putting The Cartography Before The Horse
//  Luke Myers  //  Erin Oliver  //  Ian Wilson  //

That's Absurd!
//  Leonidas Dezes  //  Laura Pérez Insua  //  Lisa McCarthy  //  Maxwell Parker  //

 

PUTTING THE CARTOGRAPHY BEFORE THE HORSE: ART AND OUR ENVIRONMENT
by SK West 

Listen on SoundCloud to an audio version of the text

A setting is a landscape is an environment is a habitat is a shelter is a domain is a world is a space is a place. No matter where, people are; the human body contains itself yet is perpetually contained by something else. The boundaries between the physical body and its ever-changing surroundings are negotiated with our every movement or mood. Intangible qualities, like ambiance or tension, have the possibility to directly affect our internal perceptions as much as tangible factors, such as rose petals on the bedspread or a polluted traffic jam. An individual’s environment is predictably unstable, both temporally and geographically. Furthermore, one of the many delightful paradoxes of humanity is that we’re really good at destroying the only place we inhabit; the artist sets out to plot the points of interest or insignificance within the sphere of our global realm. 

LUKE MYERS takes convening with nature to another, deeper level: he has spent several hours reading books to ants, capturing their movements on a high-resolution camera, and spending time with them in the wild. By presenting these minute creatures and their quiet lives moving here and there on the big screen, the viewer can appreciate all the work ants really do; by reading books to the ants, Myers demonstrates his dedication to the environment on multiple strata, from the physically insignificant to the cerebral. Some of his other works further strengthen – or, at least, remind us to fortify – the potential of our connection with natural beings, and signify technology’s role in doing so. 

ERIN OLIVER creates installations that abstract the natural environment with ephemeral materials and projected imagery to invent a space of light and shadow. Her work spatializes ideas of artifice and imagination, landscape and world, construction and intuition. These installations are informed by scientific diagrams and her own understanding of nature as it relates to the space of the installation, materials used, and projections displayed. The intricate layers of physical material and surfaces in relation to the intangible light and shadows amalgamate into an otherworldly atmosphere that is at once familiar and unknown. 

IAN WILSON doesn’t necessarily paint daydreams, but rather the places where one daydreams. The window you stare out of to escape your desk job becomes a portal to another life, and allows your brain to project alternate realities where you win that argument by saying the perfect retort, or you end up falling in love with that guy in the lavender sweater that you once saw at the zoo, or some other completely reasonable thing to daydream about. The light bouncing off of the clouds through the airplane window is shown as a fractal pattern that reaches to the edges of the canvas, a dazzling glare made tangible instead of subtly colored, which further transforms a common picture into a chance for imagination. Regular spaces like windows, airports or planes, a walkway with a railing are translated into a vivid system of line and shape, thus revealing our own musings on the potential of re-vision.

 

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ARTISTS + WORKS

Luke Myers // Somerville, Maine
B.A. (2018) University of Maine, Augusta
Luke Myers is a sculptor and multi-disciplinary artist who fuses scientific methodologies and technology with natural materials and concerns. His practice investigates the possibility of rebuilding empathetic connections to the natural world, in response to the disasters of anthropocentrism. He is currently working on a series of “Artifacts of Uncertain Temporality,” taking as a starting point the idea that the far future and distant past are colliding in our present, presenting exciting opportunities for objects and artists.
lukeamyers.com

Erin Oliver // Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania
B.S. Art Education (2005) Temple University, Philadelphia
Erin Oliver’s multi-disciplinary installation work investigates ideas about abstraction and artifice, cyclical processes, and permeable spatial membranes. Through an intuitive making process, she uses abstraction to deconstruct natural imagery through drawing, cutting, layering, and suspending ephemeral materials in space. She then super-imposes those shapes through light and digital projection, composing echoed forms through layers of shadows. The materials serve as objects as well as screens, distorting the sense of light and space, and notions of real, constructed, and imagined.
erin-oliver.com

Ian Wilson // Greenville, North Carolina
B.F.A. (2011) Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina
Ian Wilson's painting practice is an investigation of personal experiences with mundane and common experiences of boredom and daydreaming. He uses framing devices such as windows, railing, or objects in motion such as vessels, as what he calls ‘partitions.' He uses these partitions to place the viewer in quotidian places such as airports, grocery stores, piers, the natural world, or the workplace. This treatment elevates mundane objects, such as partitions, and the common experience of looking, boredom, and waiting through a sense of play and exploration.
ianwilsonart.net

 

 

Out To Pasture: 2021 MFA Graduation Exhibition is supported in part by the USF School of Art and Art History, the Stanton Storer Embrace the Arts Foundation, MFAO, and CAM Club.