October 2014 – Columbia MFA VALS

Thursday, November 6, 8 PM: Rochelle Feinstein

Uncategorized

The Estate of Rochelle F., fabric, paper, drop cloth, stretcher, 2009

feinstein_4

Untitled #1, Oil and graphite on canvas, 2013

Rochelle Feinstein was raised in Queens, New York, and lives and works in New York. Rochelle has received numerous prestigious grants and residency fellowships in honor of her broad practice that spans painting, photography, installation, and video. Recent awards and residencies include the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship at Harvard University, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Art Purchase Prize, Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Rochelle has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Centre d’arte Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland in January 2016, and has had recent solo exhibitions at On Stellar Rays and Higher Pictures in New York City, and her work was also included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

Rochelle was appointed to Yale Faculty in 1994 and is the director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking. She received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in 1975 and an M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1978.

Rochelle will be giving studio visits to Ioana Manolache and Brooke Holloway.

Tuesday, October 28, 8PM: David Altmejd

Uncategorized

The Center, 2008

David Altmejd (born 1974) is known for his intricate and highly worked room-size installations and sculptures. Seamlessly moving between a variety of aesthetic modes–from an almost ascetic minimalism in works employing plaster and mirror to works teeming with accumulations of various objects–Altmejd’s work offers carefully wrought meditations on the cycles of life and death, interiority and exteriority, sexuality and spirituality.

David Altmejd has shown widely in the United States, Canada, and Europe. His major solo exhibition “Flux” just opened this October at the Musee d’art Moderne de la ville de Paris in France.

David received his MFA in 2001 here at Columbia University and his BFA in 1998 at Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada.

www.davidaltmejd.com

David will be giving studio visits with Stephen Jackson, Angelica Teuta, and J.P. Mot.

Tuesday, October 21, 8PM: Laurel Nakadate

Uncategorized

Screen shot 2014-10-17 at 4.34.15 PM

Lucky Tiger #35, 2009

Laurel Nakadate is an American photography and video artist living in New York City. Her work engages themes of seduction, power, loss, intimacy and betrayal. She explores the possibilities and limits of sexuality and gender roles. In her most recent work she attempts to trace her genealogy through photographs of distant relatives. Nakadate is also writer and director of the films, “Stay the Same Never Change” from 2009 which was an official selection at Sundance Film Festival, and “The Wolf Knife,” from 2011. Nakadate’s work has been shown at MoMA PS1, in a 2005 survey of emerging artists, “Greater New York,” and with a solo show, “Only the Lonely,” in 2011. She received her MFA from Yale University where she is currently a lecturer.

Strangers in the Night: Laurel Nakadate Meets Her Relatives

http://laurelnakadate.weebly.com/

Laurel will be giving studio visits with Cy Gavin and Rachel Stern

Tuesday, October 14, 8PM: Amanda Alfieri

Uncategorized

Still from 2pacalypse Now, 2013

Project Thug Life Fitness

Amanda Alfieri is a performance and video artist working in New York City. In 2011 she was possessed by Tupac Shakur, an event on which she based the majority of her subsequent work. Alfieri uses her body as the subject of her work, often changing and manipulating it. She is a graduate of Skowhegan School of painting and drawing and Columbia University.

Clifford Owens has said Alfieri is “one of the most interesting and exciting young artists working in New York City. Her work is authentic, unapologetic, “real,” raw, and goose-bump-beautiful. I’m surprised that more artists and curators don’t know about her work, they should. I’m not sure if this artist would claim to be either a feminist artist or a Latina artist, but it seems to me that her work decidedly disrupts both narrow notions of creative and political agency. I think her work challenges viewers to think about ‘the other’ and a woman in ways that are uncommon, unconventional, and uncomfortable. I can think of very few young women (or men) in New York City who make trans-disciplinary art that’s this good.”

Click here for Amanda Alfieri’s Website

Tuesday, October 7th, 8 PM: Amber Hawk Swanson

Uncategorized

HawkSwanson-05-Tilikum — Amber Doll > Tilikum, 2011

A 489838 — To Hold, Bibbidi Bobbidi (After), large format c-print

Amber Hawk Swanson (b. 1980, Davenport, Iowa) is a video and performance artist living and working in New York City. Hawk Swanson holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Studio Arts, 2006) and is a recipient of a 2014 Franklin Furnace Fund Grant.

Recent exhibitions and screenings include Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Denny Gallery (NYC), Momenta Art (Brooklyn), and Locust Projects (solo, Miami).Recent residencies include Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, LMCC, Workspace (NYC), MacDowell (New Hampshire), Yaddo (New York), Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program (NYC), Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (Maine), Atlantic Center for the Arts, ACA (Florida, curated by Coco Fusco), and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NYC).

In Amber Doll > TILKUM, Hawk Swanson transforms her identical, life-like sex doll into a replica of a killer whale who lives in captivity and has killed three people. She conducted the ten-day 50-hour transformation alone, but broadcasted it on Livestream to an audience of 33,100 worldwide.

Amber Hawk Swanson’s Website

Performance Artist Censored and Banned on Ustream Because of Doll Nudity

Winners of the Studio Visit Lottery:

Talia Link and Patrice Helmar