UPenn Undergraduate Senior Thesis 2012 opening 3/20

Opening reception March 20, 2012 5-7pm

Exhibition ongoing from March 20- April19

Charles Addams Fine Arts Gallery

The Senior Thesis Exhibition and catalogue reflect the work made in a yearlong project-based course. The Senior Seminar course, the capstone of the major within the Fine Arts Department, culminates in a final body of work that reflects intense research, process, discipline and experimentation in a chosen medium. Much time, thought, and struggle has been put forth.
This is the culmination of the senior Fine Art majors’ hard work and determination. They have been refining their methods and materials, and by now have amassed awareness and understanding of their projects’ objectives, concerns, dilemmas, as well as a conscious understanding of all of their disparate and multi-layered influences.

Featured artists include: Tenaya Anue, Becky Bailey, Jillian Blackwell, Lynda Brody, Alex Goree, Alex Hovnanian, Connie Ko, Weiren Liu, Sayra Lopez, Quintin Marcus, Amanda Murphy, Claire Niebergall, Jesse Rappaport, Alex Remnick, Sarah Shults, Elise Wrabetz, and Allison Zuckerman.

First Among Equals opens at the ICA 3/14

WEDNESDAY / 14 / MARCH / 2012 / 6:30PM

Please join ICA Philadelphia for the opening celebration of First Among Equals. In a moment of unprecedented social connection, how do artists work together outside of their individual practices? Focusing on Los Angeles and Philadelphia, First Among Equals considers the various modes that contemporary artists have developed to work with their peers and reach across generations. Cooperative, if at times contentious, contributions to the show include performance, publications, curatorial projects, and artworks that incorporate the work of other artists. Who comes first in these relationships? By highlighting the dynamics of negotiation, dialogue, influence, contingency, and competition at work in contemporary artistic practice, First Among Equals resists the notion that collaboration equals consensus.

First Among Equals draws on the respective communities of the exhibition's curators. Philadelphia participants include Bodega, Alex Da Corte, Extra Extra, and Marginal Utility and Machete Group. Los Angeles participants include Kathryn Andrews, P&Co., Mateo Tannatt, and Wu Tsang.

Opening Celebration
Wednesday, March 14, 6:30PM
Celebrate First Among Equals with a DJ set by Wendy Yao of Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), a performative sculpture by Kathryn Andrews, complimentary La Colombe coffee, and a cash bar. The evening begins with an exhibition walkthrough with participating artists and curators Alex Klein and Kate Kraczon.

Participants: Kathryn Andrews, Bodega (Elyse Derosia, Ariela Kuh, Lydia Okrent, James Pettengill, Eric Veit), Alex Da Corte, Extra Extra (Derek Frech, Joe Lacina, Daniel Wallace), Machete Group (Avi Alpert, Alexi Kukuljevic, and Gabriel Rockhill), Marginal Utility (Yuka Yokoyama, David Dempewolf), P&Co. (Aram Moshayedi, Carter Mull, Jesse Willenbring), Mateo Tannatt, Wu Tsang

Photo-ethnography workshop with Lawrence Salzmann 3/16

Laurence Salzman Photo-ethnography Workshop Friday, March 16 12:00-2:00PM Morgan Building, White Room 205 S 34th Street

Philadelphia PA 19104Visions of Younger Days, from the series Garip: The Turkish Sheepdog, 2010

A documentary photographer and filmmaker since late 1960s, Laurence Salzmann has exhibited his work widely in Europe, Israel, Turkey and in the United States. Salzmann is a Pew Fellow, and recipient of numerous grants for his works. Salzmann's work Echele Ganas will be a keystone exhibit for De Peublo A Pueblo, a city-wide Philadelphia Mexican Cultural Festival from April 27-June 16. Please join us for this informative talk, which will touch on Salzmann's editorial priorities for his work with photographs and films. Together we will inquire about the relationships he creates between his work and the human subjects that he photographs. Salzmann will illustrate the discussion with excerpts from his works in Romania and Cuba, including Last Jews of Radauti (1974) and Imagining Cutumba (2004.) http://www.laurencesalzmann.com/index.html

Hennessy Youngman (Jayson Musson MFA '11) curates ITSA SMALL, SMALL WORLD

Youtube hip hop-meets-art world personality and how-to-art guru Hennessy Youngman (played by Jayson Musson UPenn MFA '11) will be curating an upcoming show at artist Maurizio Cattelan and New Museum curator Massimiliano Gioni's new gallery "Family Business" at 520 W. 21st Street in Chelsea. As his call for entries on YouTube suggests, Hennessy will be displaying all work that is brought to the gallery for submission from 10am-7pm March 30th-April 1st. The exhibition will be called "ITSA SMALL SMALL WORLD" and opens on April 3rd at 6pm.

As Hennessy himself says: "If you didn't get into the biennial, the triennial, and didn't even get into the Brucennial, then you know: bring your work to Hennessy."

Artie Vierkant (UPenn '09) in ArtForum Magazine

Image Objects (2011 - ongoing)

Six-pass UV prints on machine-cut sintra, altered documentation images

Artie Vierkant, an undergraduate UPenn fine arts alumni (SAS '09) who majored in photography, has been written about in a wonderful review and feature article in the latest issue of Artforum. The article is entitled "Photo Op" written by Brian Droitcour and can be found on pages 111-112. The piece goes on to discuss his interesting gallery and web based process with formalist photographic installations that are only documented through a series of altered/doctored images meant to exist on the internet. Therefore the work you consume online is not representative of the physical installation. Vierkant's work aims to address the role of image reproduction in our contemporary society reliant on the internet. In his own words, his work “concerns the degree to which digital media constitute fully tangible objects, actors which are both pliable and physical, structures to be broken into pieces and reconceived.”

We will post the full article when it is linked to online, otherwise please pick up a copy of the March issue of Artforum on your local newstands!

Hennessy Youngman (Jayson Musson, MFA '11) featured in NYTimes article

Join us in congratulating UPenn alumni Hennessy Youngman for his recent NYTimes article "Biting Humor Aimed at Art" written by Austin Considine.

Excerpt:

The videos are funny partly because they are incongruous: insightful jabs made by a hip-hop personality whose faux-outsider perspective is intended to challenge the art world’s pretensions and inaccessibility. In his most-watched video, “How to Make an Art,” Hennessy sarcastically criticizes his audience for using terms like “talent” with regard to art — while wearing a baseball cap depicting Ernie from Sesame Street and an outsize medallion of a pharaoh.

“Hennessy comes out of a specific reaction to graduate school and the academic, fine-art world that I was exposed to at school,” said Mr. Musson, who received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania last spring.

A Day in the Life of Penn

A Day in the Life of Penn is a University Communications photography project highlighting the work of student, faculty, and staff photographers from throughout Penn to illustrate a single day on campus: April 12, 2012.

Thursday April 12, 2012

The project will document the pace and energy of life at Penn through the eyes of the community in the form of a photo essay. Starting at sunrise, the participating photographers will capture images of campus activities throughout the morning, the afternoon, and into the evening.

The University Communication's department hopes to showcase the beauty of the Penn campus, academic life, tours and activities with potential students, community engagement, research, athletics and recreation, and other activities. Once captured, "A Day in the Life of Penn" will be presented on a multimedia website built to also include opportunities for interactivity and user engagement.

For more information please contact UCOMMS-WEB@LISTS.UPENN.EDU

Guidelines & Submissions

• Maximum of 4"x6" @ 300 dpi, high quality JPEG. Please keep RAW / original image for archiving.
• Submissions must contain embedded file info with description of subject matter including photographer'sname, location and time that the photo was captured. Please get photo ID's when possible.
• Images must be taken during a 24 hr period of Thursday, April 12th.
• Images must be submitted by Monday, April 16th.
• By submitting images to this project you agree to allow the Office of University Communications to use for stock and marketing purposes.
• Method for submitting photos will be announced next month.

Ken Lum Lecture @ the ICA

Ken Lum Visiting Artist Lecture ICA Tuttleman Auditorium 36th and Sansom Streets Monday February 20, 2012 11:00-12:00

Please join us for this lecture by Visiting Artist Ken Lum. Lum is internationally renowned for his work in sculpture, painting and photography. His practice as an artist is concerned with the dialectics of the private and public construction of identity, space and politics.

Lum has participated in numerous international art exhibitions, including the Sydney Biennale, Venice Biennale, Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany and more recently, the 2007 Istanbul Biennial and 2008 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.

Lum has also published widely and is the Founding Editor of Yishu: The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. Lum was made a Guggenheim Fellow in 1999 and awarded a Killam Award for Outstanding Research in 1998 and the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award in 2007.

Saul Ostrow Guest Critic Lecture at the ICA tomorrow at 11:30

Saul Ostrow
Guest Critic Lecture
ICA Tuttleman Auditorium
36th and Sansom Streets
Tuesday February 14, 2012
11:30 -12:30

Please join us for this lecture by Visiting Critic Saul Ostrow. Since 1987, Ostrow has curated over 80 exhibitions in the US and abroad. Recently he curated the exhibition "Modeling the Photographic: The Ends of Photography" for the McDonough Museum of Art. Saul Ostrow is the editor of the book series "Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture" published by Routledge London, and is the Art Editor for Bomb Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Art in America and New Art Examiner.

Gabriel Martinez (Senior Lecturer) & Chad States artist discussion at the Print Center 2/23/2012

Thursday, February 23, 6:00pm, free
The Print Center, 1614 Latimer Street, Philadelphia

Gabriel Martinez, Untitled (Abstractions) #5, 2011, Archival pigment print, 30"x30"


Chad States, Untitled from the series Cruising, 2010, Archival pigment print, 24"x30"

Gabriel Martinez and Chad States are both Philadelphia-based artists that have recently completed extensive photographic bodies of work that are receiving national and international attention. Both bodies of work look at unique facets of male homosexual culture and desire. Martinez, in his recent body of work exhibited in Boston, photographed groups of gay men who come together for safe sex encounters. States, meanwhile, has traveled nationally documenting men that "cruise" for anonymous sex in the woods. This body of work was recently released in a beautiful book entitled Cruising.

The event at the Print Center in Philadelphia (6PM on the 23rd, free to the public) will be a discussion between the two artists and the public, examining the complex issues that bring together and also differentiate the sexual cultures depicted in these fabulous bodies of work.