Sun Spell

The Ohio State University Department of Art and Urban Arts Space are pleased to present Sun Spell, a group exhibition showcasing the thesis work of the MFA Class of 2024.

Carmen Winant, Professor, Thesis Research & Writing Seminar, 2023, has offered the following statement on the exhibition: 

MFA thesis exhibitions are an outlier, unlike any other kind of show. Dare I say that they are my favorite kind of show? One physical space holds eight discrete projects—anchored here in themes ranging from solidarity, inheritance, liberation, dreams, deep time, close observation, girlhood, cultural entwinement, probing, physical guts—and yet, they speak to one another (across their practices, I note a search for mother-figures, an appreciation for the garden as form, a recurrence of the multiple, a commitment to freedom struggle). These artists have been in close association for the better part of three years, working in studios and classrooms side by side, engaged in an unending flow of conversation. Their work is different, but they have shared their skills in producing it: how to cast glass, how to shoot film, how to find literary heroes, how to dance into the night. In this way, is it any surprise that their practices bleed? No one becomes an artist in a vacuum. I have worked with this group closely and can report that they have conjugated one another in surprising and sometimes imperceptible ways.  

The title of this show is drawn from a long-forgotten poem. Better that way, as it leaves space for mystery. In cruising this show, ask yourself: in what ways does artwork behave like a mirage? Subject us to glare? Make us sweat? Spellbind us? I write these words in the dead of winter, in a long spell of overcast grayness, thinking about how these artists—together and apart—have brought in an immense warmth.