Husk-E-News, September 2008
Alumni Biennial (One)
September 8 - October 10, 2008
Artists and curator dialogue: September 8, 4 p.m.
Exhibition opening reception: September 8, 5:30 - 7 p.m.
Alumni Biennial (One) features five artists selected by Richard Klein,
the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art ‘s exhibitions director. Klein
brings together a painter, a graphic designer, two performance
artists, and an organizer of interdisciplinary public projects. All
five artists will be showing new pieces and two of the alumni will
work collaboratively. Speaking about Alumni Biennial (One) and the
artists he chose Klein states.
“UCONN has an incredibly strong program and the challenge of the
selection process was in choosing a small group of artists who could
represent the range of accomplishment exhibited in its alumni. The
five artists I selected also represent a cross-section of contemporary
practice, including painting, sculpture, graphic design, video, and
performance. If there is a thread that ties these artists together, it
is their willingness to experiment and not be tied down to a
particular medium or genre."
About the artists
Afarin Rahmanifar (MFA 1996) is based in Connecticut and is a faculty
member at Eastern Connecticut University. Her small mixed-media
paintings suggest hierarchical systems of beauty and culture by
juxtaposing and combining images from mainstream American popular
culture with images from Persian paintings. Gendered, provocative and
ultimately indefinable, Rahmanifar’s paintings investigate the role of
“bodies,” apparatuses and vessels both infinitely unique and
infinitely universal, as it exists in worlds miles apart. Her work has
been widely exhibited and collected internationally.
Apirat Infahsaeng (BFA 2003) is a artist and designer based out of
Brooklyn, New York. He is constantly absorbed in a wide range of
projects, ranging from self-initiated, collaborative and client
driven. Apirat’s conceptual framework can best be described in
somewhat of an oxymoron: organic digital images. His design delicately
balances bipolar modus operandis: navigating technology in order to
create images rooted in romantic ideals of universality, integration,
and interconnectedness. His aesthetic and interests oscillate
somewhere between technological constructions and hand crafted visions
that easily translate into dimensional worlds. Infahsaeng, a Senior
Designer at BIG has developed projects for companies such as: AT&T
Wireless, Coca-Cola, Kodak and Yahoo.
The content of Emcee C.M., Master of None's (Colin McMullan, MFA 2005)
work is people: people working, living and struggling. His projects
employ spontaneity, teamwork, play, intuition, efficiency, chance,
adventure, difference, language, volunteerism, problem solving,
recovery, sustainability, comfort, learning, discovery, and
attainment: all of these, all at once. After graduating, Colin
relocated to New York and has presented projects in Germany, Spain,
South Korea and Serbia. He has also presented unofficial and
collaborative projects in public spaces and has shows this year at the
Bronx Museum and Artists Space in New York. Emcee C.M. and Ted
Efremoff (UConn MFA 2006), with participation from the citizen
shipwrights of Willimantic and the K.I.D.S., collaborated to organize
Pulling Together: The Legends of Willimantic, an interdisciplinary
project that centered around building and sailing a large wooden boat,
and the stories and relationships that came out of the process.
Ari Tabei and Rebecca Parker, (both MFA 2007,) are performance artists
already receiving positive career recognition. Tabei, currently based
in Brooklyn, won residencies with New York's Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council and the Vermont Studio Center. Tabei's dress sculptures,
meticulously hand-constructed garments within which she performs, have
been gaining recognition. For Alumni Biennial (One), Tabei presents,
Dress for Today #5. Made of Japanese newspaper, staples, and black
cloth, Tabei’s fifth project in her series is fragile, delicate,
detailed and intimate. Simultaneously, however, it is difficult,
overwhelming and baffling. The dress, itself a sculpture in its own
right, acts as the vessel through which her performance is carried out.
Parker has also had significant professional success. Her work has
been included in several juried and invitational exhibitions and was
recently performed in New York and Philadelphia. Aside from art-
making, Parker curates exhibitions for the Connecticut Commission for
Tourism and Culture. For Alumni Biennial (One), Parker showcases two
performance projects: the first, What Girls do in White Dresses,
investigates the transitional experience of growing up and the games
we play. Through the reenactment of childhood activities she
questions the way in which experiences become gendered as we move away
from childhood and mimic activities of adults. Parker will also be
exhibiting two new collaborative performances, one with Emcee C.M.,
Master of None and the other with fellow friend and artist Ted Efremoff.
For more information about this exhibition and the contact.
Barry A. Rosenberg
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
860 486 1511
Contemporary Art Galleries
University of Connecticut, Storrs
Hours: Weekdays, 10 am - 4 pm
http://contemporaryartgalleries.uconn.edu/
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