May 9–16, 2014
Reception: Friday, May 9, 6–8pm
The Highline Loft
508 West 26th Street
5th Floor
New York, NY
Hours: Daily 11am–6pm
Nine artists of striking thematic and material range join forces in Whistle Stop: MFA Thesis Exhibition, an exhibition by the graduating class of Purchase College, SUNY. Participants include Miyuki Ansari, Lindsay Garcia, Samantha Harmon, Christina Healy, Juwon Lee, Karen Lee, Elizabeth Meyer, Julia Norton, and Ryann Slauson.
Tapping the visual vocabulary and pacing of experimental cinema, Miyuki Ansari delves into memory and identity through immersive video installations. Lindsay Garcia frames a language of the posthuman through performances and videos touching on queer feminism, the politics of food and animal rights, and apocalyptic space. In chromatically rich videos that combine mordancy and pathos, Samantha Harmoncasts herself as various characters coming alive (and undone) within social and psychic constrains. Exploring a timeworn mnemonic device in large prints of mixed techniques, Christina Healy taps the inherently transformative capacity of the printmaking medium. Juwon Lee‘s pseudo-documentary videos using found internet footage and scrambled translations form the basis of adroit accompanying paintings. Karen Lee melds photographic processes and sculptural dimensionality in objects that express ephemerality and mark the passage of time. In stop-motion animations and installations, Elizabeth Meyercreates trippy narratives in which a puppet, seeking spiritual enlightenment, has strange encounters with color. Julia Norton invents overlooked man-made utopic spaces in her large, mixed-medium paintings. In DIY-style sculptures, prints and performances, Ryann Slauson mines her childhood memories of Florida, creating of football heroes and consumer culture a unique cultural landscape.
The School of Art+Design at Purchase College offers a two-year, interdisciplinary MFA program. This small and highly selective course of study fosters the artistic, intellectual, and professional growth of each student through the exposure to a variety of viewpoints represented by faculty, and through independent studio work, group critiques, faculty mentors, and a rigorous academic program. The School also hosts a Visiting Artist Lecture Series; this year’s visitors included Jules de Balincourt, Janet Biggs, Keltie Ferris, Barnaby Furnas, Martin Kersels, Jon Kessler, Laleh Khorramian, and Amanda Ross-Ho. Emphasis is placed on the development of originality, clarity, and studio discipline that will carry into the student’s professional career. Every year the School of Art+Design hosts an exhibition in New York City featuring the work of the graduating class.
The School of Art+Design, part of the School of the Arts at Purchase College, SUNY, offers premier programs that prepare students for careers in the visual arts and design, as well as lives informed by aesthetic experience. The school honors tradition, encourages experimentation and collaboration, develops critical thinking, and embraces new concepts, materials, and technologies. A faculty of working artists is committed to creating a supportive climate in which students are passionate about learning to see, to think, to make, and to reflect. Our graduates are leaders in cultural production throughout the world. Located within the School of Art+Design, the Richard & Dolly Maass Gallery presents exhibitions that provide professional context for students and interacts with their daily classroom experience. The gallery’s program focuses on emerging artists, A+D alumni, current faculty, and student work. School of the Arts exhibitions and programs in the Richard & Dolly Maass Gallery are supported, in part, by the Purchase College Foundation and through an endowment from Richard and Dolly Maass.
Purchase College, SUNY
School of the Arts | School of Art+Design
735 Anderson Hill Road
Purchase, NY 10577
