Artist Presentation

Kevin Beasley

Here Name: Kevin Beasley Born: 1985, Lynchburg, Virginia Art:

• sculpture

• performance

• (site-specific) installation

Self-identify: Black Video: Here

Current Exhibition: Casey Kaplan gallery Education:

• BFA: College for Creative Studies

• MFA: Yale

Material

• Founded(clothing, resin, foam)

• sound(installation, performance)

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Selection

1. "slabs" sculpture
   • He uses raw cotton from Virginia, historical documents, and his personal belongings to make this so-called "slabs". Inspired by walking alongside of a unharvested cotton field. Materials become ways of telling history of trans-Atlantic slave trade.
2. Cotton Gin(see video)
   • He loves to use cotton as his material. One day he thinks he can make t-shirts for himself. So he searched on Ebay and the first ad that comes out is this Cotton Gin motor for sell. Cotton Gin is used to separate seeds from cotton, therefore increased the number of slaves by the area of plantation needed.
   • When he ask the seller what a Gotton Gin motor actually sound like, the seller couldn't describe. He puts the motor into a sound-isolating chamber and use micks to adjust the sound. The artist wants the audience to listen to the history, what the slavery and the legacy of America South sounded like.
3. Untitled (Sea)
   • It demonstrates Kevin Beasley's choice of material as well. He used pieces of found garment picked up from the Harlem street and harden them with resin. This artwork reminds people of the persistence of their abandoned clothes.
4. Performance: I Want My Spot Back
   • Beasley connects sound production and the movement of the physical body through his performances

Thomas Hirschhorn

Name: Thomas Hirschhorn Identity: Swiss artist in Paris Education: Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich

• graphic designer

Do:

• Site-specific

• Collage

• Community Art

• Working with big space

Unique:

• Use of public space: exhibition in "public space" such as urban settings, sidewalks...

• Transform gallery into caves.

• Art to transform others: “I want to use art as a tool to establish a contact with the Other - this is a necessity - and I am convinced that the only possible contact with the Other happens “One to One”, as equal.”

City Housing Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5yyegM2u88&t=335s&ab_channel=Art21

• participatory sculpture at the Forest Houses complex in the Bronx, New York

• 8 weeks, every-week: organize discussion, talks, building with people

• Engage with ordinary people: neighborhood children (not just for art collector, museums, critics)

Ruins Making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5Qw2plE_ZQ&ab_channel=SouthLondonGallery

• Different kinds of ruins: destruction, war, corruption, natural disasters.

• tape from ground to top (take, cardboard, paint, pictures)

• There is no absolute failure, no perfect, there exists only "in between"

• Quote: "Destruction is difficult. It is as difficult as creation." (thinking about revolution, destruction for building something new) difficult to create ruin in artistical way

• Understanding of sculpture: To use the space completely in harmony with the space

Map Making

• recreation of representation

Pixel Collage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGYWu8foyos&ab_channel=LouisianaChannel

• pixel opens abstract space that open for images

• media: pixelized, gain of authenticity. No information. The degrees of abstraction. Don't hide the worst part, but use it as abstraction.

• Open to interpretation by lack of information.

• like stupidity of collage (glue together, life as collage)

Jessica

Giant unrealistic scupture

Tiona Nekkia McClodden

Conceptual fillmaker, curator Race, gender, shared ideas, African dispersal work

• I pray to the wrong god for you

Thomas Hirschorn

Katalin

So... I don't follow tradition without prove that the tradition would be beneficial. Like how college don't teach you why grades are important before letting you to get your grade. I