Abbas Akhavan\, Eryn e Donahue\, Rebecca Donald\, Derek Dunlop\, Robert Niven\, Michael Euyung O h
Strange Bedfellows points to the diverse and dist inct practices of the 2006 Master of Fine Arts graduates. This is an excell ent opportunity to view the work of six emerging artists whose practices ex plore the mediums of video\, sculpture\, performance and drawing.
Eryn e Donahue problematizes notions of the portrait\, where the autono mous identity of real individuals and bodies is revealed and enlarged. Dona hue's use of various photographic and print media has led to a series of ex plorations about how humanity is represented\, remembered and understood. H er approach is reminiscent of archival or mnemonic schematics that organize larger concepts and questions of human life into more manageable parts.
Rebecca Donald combines drawing\, painting and sculptu re in her visceral works about the home. Her thin-skinned 'towels' are lite rally made by the skin that forms on top of thickly poured oil paint as it dries. The skin of the towels sags and wrinkles with age much as a person’s would. Donald’s drawings are obsessively rendered\, little abstractions of rod-shaped bacteria that make up objects we take for granted in the hygien ic home: a faucet\, a sponge or even a large section of wallpaper.
Un der the obscene pressures of advanced capitalism\, Derek Dunlop considers how our culture's rage is both intensified and diffused thr ough the celebration and destruction of the aggressive male. Dunlop conside rs drawing a metaphor for the process by which one can learn and internaliz e the subtleties of self-constitution. Drawing can be performed in agreemen t with the enforced institutionalization and compartmentalization of everyd ay life\, or as a possible strategy of refutation or revolt. Dunlop works t hrough the shifting nature of power relations in everyday life\, especially in terms of masculinity\, sexuality and desire.
Robert Niven explores various materials and methods\, finding ways to make vis ible conjunctions between memory\, mis-recognition and metamorphosis. Niven finds materials in a state of functional limbo and gives them an absurd im itative gist\, to confront viewers with recognizable objects in alternative manners. These odd encounters are meant to create a dialogue about our per ceptions and preconceptions of materials\, objects and forms.
Michael Euyung Oh began his "ranking projects" in 1999 by reorgan izing retail catalogue images of diamond rings\, handguns\, and burial cask ets according to his personal taste. For Oh\, the act of making judgments t o construct a value system expresses today’s utilitarian materialism and in stitutional discourse\, and is also an exercise in subjective absurdity. Oh ’s latest ranking project\, 100 Popular First Names is concerned with textu al and lingual qualities around naming\, the resonance of personal-cultural memory and fantasy\, and the appearance of control and determination.
< p>For further information please contact: Naomi Sawada at naomi.sawada@ubc.ca\,Morris and Helen Belk
in Art Gallery
http://www.belkin.ubc.ca