Exchanges

Antonius Bui

Georgia Saxelby

Sheldon Scott

Sheldon Scott

Kristin Adair

Kristin Adair

Estefaní Mercedes

Estefaní Mercedes

Stephen Hayes

Chloe Bensahel

Chloe Bensahel

Hoesy Corona

Hoesy Corona

February 2-25, 2018

Exchanges

The concept of the studio, and with it the artist’s role, is ever-evolving. What once was a “stationary place where portable objects are produced” in Daniel Buren’s original 1971 essay “The Function of the Studio,” is now a sanctuary of creation, a hub for dialogue, and a center of community engagement.

The artists featured in “Exchanges” seek to challenge the traditional notion of art and commerce by amplifying and illustrating the complex interplay between artist and community. As part of a studio program which emphasizes the power of art and social change, the eight Halcyon Arts Lab Fellows create works of art which facilitate dialogue and inspire action around contemporary issues of social justice. These close connections with community—both within the studio and throughout local, international and virtual centers—allow for a reciprocal exchange of their art practice, creating synchronicity which then, and only then, can manifest as a material work of art. As the Halcyon artists navigate their nine-month residency, they simultaneously evolve their individual practices while engaging with one another’s experiences and challenges. These intimate, studio-based exchanges become increasingly important as they collectively face the question: what is the social role of the artist today?

This exhibtion features Halcyon Arts Lab Cohort 1 FellowsKristin Adair, Chloe Bensahel, Antonius Bui, Hoesy Corona, Stephen Hayes, Estefaní Mercedes, Georgia Saxelby, and Sheldon Scott. Halcyon Arts Lab is a residency fellowship program in Washington, DC which supports artists whose work deals with issues of social justice and change. Exchanges marks the halfway point of the Halcyon fellowship and offers a tangible glimpse into the multi-layered and socially-focused practices of these eight artists:

Estefaní Mercedes

Chloe Bensahel

Kristin Adair

Antonius Bui

Hoesy Corona

Georgia Saxelby

Stephen Hayes

Sheldon Scott

Mary Murphy

Mary Murphy

Mary Murphy

February 2-25, 2018

Hybrids

My work marries traditional illusionistic painting space with the latent psychological aspects of digital manipulation to explore the sexual unconscious.

In my paintings, drawings, and digital images, I explore themes of identity and transformation. These images are intimate, even erotic, and reference various body parts, some comic, others hideous. My works are compelling, even disturbing, but also playful, straddling comedy and tragedy. I am interested in exploring the grotesque as a reflection of her own reality, and these works embody the tension she feels between the deadly serious and the blackly, subversively humorous.

My work is not conventional realism, although she does use a recognizable source. These images all arise from the face of one sibling taken from the last photograph of my intact family. Through digital manipulation, color and scale, I elaborate on the dynamic emotional content of my relationship with this sibling. Teasing out the struggle for individual identity within familial roles and the sometimes traumatic psychological consequences—disintegration, fragmentation—of this struggle, my work also posits the formation of a unique, whole, and integrated self forged from these experiences.

I think of what I do in terms of Surrealism’s imaginative reworking of reality, using the familiar to create the jarringly unexpected. Distortion serves as a metaphor in my work for physical and psychological transformation. The seamless spatial and scale disjunctions of digital language evoke the illogical juxtapositions of dreams. The mutation of teeth and eyes into abstract forms suggesting sexual orifices and protrusions creates ‘disembodied’ figures that are uncanny and absurd. Unlike conventional figures, these resemble cross-sections of the interior body: the translation of facial topography into sexual anatomy mirrors the movement from exterior to interior, from object to subject.

I call these works Hybrids, firstly, because they combine portraiture and self-portraiture: the external representation of a sibling with my emotional perspective and my experience of my own body; secondly, they combine disparate modus operandi, such as interior and exterior spaces, abstract and representational imagery, illusionistic and digital languages; and thirdly, hybridity expresses my fundamental belief that nothing is pure or without aspects of other realities.

 In these works, I am providing a psychological, visual, and material context for a moment of transition, of something becoming—a new entity, a merged whole—through the integration of color, surface and light.

Mary Murphy was born in Staten Island, NY and received her MFA from Tyler School of Art, studying with Robert Storr, Frank Bramblett, Margo Margolis and Stan Whitney. She completed her undergraduate degree at Barnard College, graduating cum laude with a BA in English and Writing, and received an MA in Art and Education from Teachers College. Murphy also attended The New York Studio School and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She was a Fulbright Fellowship finalist (Spain), has been a three-time finalist for a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and was a finalist for the Bader Fund Grant. She has received an NEA Fellowship, a Fellowship and several Special Opportunity Stipend grants from the PA Council on the Arts, and a Fleisher Challenge Grant from the Fleisher Art Memorial of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In addition, she has had residencies at the VT Studio Center and VA Center for the Creative Arts and will be a resident at the Brooklyn Cluster National Residency Program in 2018.

William T. Wiley

Ke Francis

Claes Oldenburg

Werner Hoeflich

February 2-25, 2018

Creative Labor: Selections from the Hechinger Collection

Creative Labor: Selections from the Hechinger Collection brings together a cross-section of diverse works by fifteen visionary artists from the Hechinger Collection, which was gifted to International Arts & Artists by John and June Hechinger in 2003. The collection’s contemporary prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures represent a variety of 20th-century art which uses tools as art, exploring the line between utility and artistry.

This special exhibition features work by: Berenice Abbott, Yuri Avvakumov, Tom Christopher, Jim Dine, Henryk Fantazos, Ke Francis, Werner Hoeflich, Jacob Lawrence, Harlan Mathieu, Mineo Mizuno, Claes Oldenburg, Jeff Spaulding, William T. Wiley, and Bill Wilson.

About the Hechinger Collection:

In the 1980s, John Hechinger’s booming chain of hardware stores led him to purchase a new company headquarters. He found the offices to be efficient, but sterile. The barren space sparked an initiative to beautify the headquarters which launched Hechinger’s acquisition of a tool-inspired collection of diverse 20th century art.

The complete Hechinger Collection, featuring nearly 400 works of art, celebrates the ubiquity of tools in our lives, transforming utilitarian objects into fanciful works of beauty, surprise, and wit. Selections from the Hechinger Collection are on view in International Arts & Artists’ offices. IA&A has also toured selections of the Hechinger Collection to exhibiting institutions throughout the United States, including Tools As Art (2001-2008), Tools in Motion (2005-2013), and ReTooled (2014-2019). Our new exhibition, Making Your Mark, presents 50 works on paper that explore the intricacies of each medium, highlighting the rich variety of materials and methods used when making a print or drawing.

 www.artsandartists.org/exhibitions-hechinger/

Grant McFarland

Grant McFarland

January 5-28, 2018

Residuals

This work was born while spending some time on the New York/ Vermont border. Its rural up there, it takes 40 minutes to get anywhere. Farm country, slate country, and like much of America far less industry than 25 years ago. The remnants of what once was are on full display. Abandoned mines, barns, small factories. The relationship with resources in the country is remarkably direct. Grow, harvest, cut, mine, mill, seed. Wood to heat, fields for food. There is an odd mixture of reliance on and disregard for the land that I think comes from having so much of it. To be clear, people in the country are not more disrespectful of the earth than their urban counterparts, almost always the opposite. But the transgressions are much more stark in the midst of so much seemingly uninhibited natural beauty. Just beneath the patina of greenery lies a plethora of individual reminders that humans have twisted and forced the land to do just what we want, as best we can, for as long as we can. 

These sculptures are made from the leftovers of this place; they are portraits of the impact of our industry on the land. In their assembly they become more than trash; they reflect our interaction with the land and our consumption of resources. They are the remains that mark the passage of our time. They relate to specific labors we undertake and execute with some sense of purpose and necessity. A quantification of that interaction changing. When we use firewood and stone, we think of their immediate use, nothing more. We neglect to acknowledge the age and scope of material beyond our purposes. We disavow its history, leave our marks etched indelibly upon the land. These piles and scars we build and carve may be all that remains of our endeavors, until they too disappear. Our conception of time is so stilted and narrow, and yet it is all we have. 

Grant McFarland is a Maryland born, Washington DC-based sculptor who graduated from University of Maryland in 2016 with a BA in studio art. He participated in the UMD Art Honors program and recently worked as a resident artist at Salem Art Works in Salem, New York. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Salem Art Works, 39th Street Gallery in Hyattsville, Maryland, Sandy Spring Museum in Olney, Maryland, Glen Echo Park in Glen Echo, Maryland, and McClean Project for the Arts in McClean, Virginia, among others. His current work is concerned with resource use, post-industrial tendencies and human-environmental interactions.

www.grantmcfarland.com

Monroe Isenberg

Monroe Isenberg

Monroe Isenberg

Monroe Isenberg

January 5-28, 2018

Lighthouse

Every so often, I happen upon a fleeting poetic moment. A moment that is clear yet inexplicable. In this moment, I experience a contemplative state, which drives my will to create. I intuit questions and answers to problems that arise through the act of making. My work reflects this ontology and investigates natural and man-made states of being.

Materials have their own essence and history, which I use to bring form to the poetic moment that inspired me. I seek to create places for contemplation, questioning, and if only for an instant, a state of immersion. My practice involves repetition, large-scale constructions, and technology to create minimal and abstract forms, installations, and experiences that reframe space and invite investigation.

Monroe Isenberg is originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He completed his undergraduate studies, Cum Laude and with honors, in Sculpture and Psychology at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon (2013). There, he experimented with wood and metal working and developed an abstract, minimalist aesthetic. After working as an artist and fabricator in Portland, he moved to Washington, D.C to pursue an MFA. Currently, he teaches and works as a graduate assistant at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Monroe is the recipient of multiple awards, grants, and residencies including the prestigious International Outstanding Student Achievement Award recognized by International Sculpture Center, Ann Bartsch Dunne Scholarship 1st place Award in sculpture, the Dean’s Fellowship at the University of Maryland, and the Tom Rooney Prize awarded by the Washington Sculptors Group. Created from wood and steel, his sculptures and installations engage balance and tension and examine the relationship between industry, culture, and the poetics of nature. Monroe’s work is held in multiple private collections and has exhibited across the United States. His work can currently be seen publicly at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota.

 www.monroeisenberg.com