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  //

 

NOSTALGIA & NOW: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MEMORY
by SK West 

Listen on SoundCloud to an audio version of the text

How did you get here? You turned the pages, or maybe just opened the book up to this point and decided to read this word (and this one, too). But, how did you get here? What were you just doing, or thinking about? Every single thing you have ever said, done, or thought has led you to this exact moment. Nobody remembers the layers of each one. The most uncanny quality about a memory is that it can feel real even if it didn’t happen, and even this un-memory can be understood as its own version of real. By trying to reconnect with parts of the past, and endeavoring to un-conceal what has been done, felt, seen, or misremembered, the artist can reconfigure their perspective – and the viewer’s, too. 

BONNIE MAE CARROW questions the personal in relation to the universal, and vice versa, in her installations. For example, the octagon-and-dot patterned tile in her century-old home in Tampa, which adds so much historical charm to the space, is not only not an anomaly of the area, but is also frequently incorporated in modern renovations. There isn’t a word for this experience, learning that what was once presumed to be an individual feeling or occurrence is actually far more common than expected, but it is something we all have had to re-order in our conscience at one point or another. Her installations of octagon-and-dot tiles with other construction materials, like drywall or OSB, reference this universal point of understanding and her childhood environment with doomsday-preppers as parents who constantly remodeled the house into a family compound for the apocalypse. 

JD HARDY leans into the idea that time is unstable with poetic video installations that are presented almost as light sculptures that bend into corners and refract between pieces of mirrors. These dreamy projections of tactile surfaces on flat walls or supports betrays our disconnect between visual expectation and the literal surroundings they are displayed on. Her videos are looped without optically disclosing such an editing format: miniscule pixels waver ever so slightly or shadows seem to flicker, which either causes the viewer to blink twice and pay attention or feel satisfied for having seen the whole of a supposedly static image. The viewer is left with an impression, and thus a memory, which may or may not align with what was really seen, and which further investigates the human experience of repetition and subjectivity. 

NADIA IVANOVA uses memory as motif by referencing patterns and materials associated with designer wealth in connection with “lesser” concrete, wood, or other forms. A concrete block with a rat’s silhouette carved out of it sits on a luxe black platform with gold studs on the sides; animal skulls and bones are displayed on a reflective, blue surface where the viewer can see their undersides upon a closer look. Her work challenges the ideologies of power and the politics of capitalism versus socialism in relation to her own national identity: the artist was born in Bulgaria under a communist regime, then moved to America shortly after the regime fell with the hope of living the “American dream”. The visual juxtaposition of such rough and durable materials with the decadent and plush surfaces reveals the tension of expectation versus reality. 

ANDRÉS RAMÍREZ is the child of Colombian and Salvadoran immigrants. This experience of growing up between cultures informs his life and his practice of processing through collective trauma, intergenerational grief, and more through images and installations. His photographs-turned-photobooks give enough of a narrative to tell his own story, while leaving plenty of room for the reader to fill in their own experiences and connections – hey, I got one of those runner-up ribbons when I was a kid, too. By presenting the vulnerability of his own memories (the personal is profound) and lived experience as a first-generation American son of immigrants (the personal is political) the viewer is able to reflect on their own points of overlap or appreciate their points of departure.

 

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ARTISTS + INSTALLATIONS

Bonnie Mae Carrow // Hockessin, Delaware
B.F.A. (2017) Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Millersville
Bonnie Mae Carrow is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice moves between contemporary craft, sculpture, video, and installation. Her work explores the home as a socio-political landscape. By recreating or manipulating household architectural elements through installation, she queers domestic spaces to interrogate the ideologies that influence their construction. In her thesis work, she combines aspects of mid-century interior design and raw materials of construction to discuss historic and contemporary housing practices as utopian ideals with dystopian realities.
bonniemaecarrow.com

JD Hardy // Pensacola, Florida
B.F.A. (2010) University of Nebraska, Omaha
JD Hardy is a video installation artist. Her looped videos offer seemingly stable frames that are fragmented, mimicking the skew of dissociation that occurs when our assumed reality suffers frequent fissures. Imagery is exposed as the viewer is caught in the path of the projector’s beam or confronts itself in mirrored planes. Projecting tactile facades onto flat surfaces, her work engages our phenomenological connection to the physical structures that surround us. Compositions focus-in while refracting out to envelop the viewer amidst layered images.
jamiedaniellehardy.com 

Nadia Ivanova // Sofia, Bulgaria
B.F.A. (2016) University of South Florida, Tampa
Nadia Ivanova is an interdisciplinary artist who combines mixed media such as concrete, wood, metal, textiles, fur, clay, and bronze to form installations. Her work examines the ideologies of power structure, the conflicts between capitalism and socialism, and the effects these have on national identity. Ivanova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria and grew up under a communist regime. Shortly after the fall of the regime and the arrival of democracy in her country, she moved to the USA with hopes to live the American dream. Her work is based on the experiences and the knowledge she gained from her homeland and what eventually became home.

Andrés Ramírez // Anchorage, Alaska
B.F.A. (2017) University of South Florida, Tampa
Andrés Ramírez's practice is primarily two-dimensional, focusing mostly on photography, installation, and video works that are meant to consider and analyze issues unique to people of color, immigrants, and first-generation Americans. While his work takes a variety of forms, it comes from a particular place that isn’t universal or immediately legible but always tries to deal with problems that everyone deals with. Whether it be loss, pain, anxiety, health issues, or politics, he looks at them through the eyes of a person between cultures.
andresramirezphoto.com

 

 

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.