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Page 1: Catalog bfa 2012

a+ D

BFA Fine Art Exhibition 2012 | May 4 – June 2, 2012

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sub•imago noun — the stage of development in an insect in which the insect is winged and capable of flight but not yet sexually mature. Occurs only in Mayflies (Ephemeroptera). With sexual maturity, the insect becomes an imago (Entz).

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ART EDUCATION IS TRAUMATIC. Undergraduates struggle to develop a practice creating objects that may be of questionable value to their society. This is especially true for the current generation of american students who face an unprecedented climate of economic and political anxiety. For the graduating class of 2012 at Columbia College Chicago, their final semester is pushed forward due to the close proximity in time and space of the NaTO summit. In this environment, it can be easy to question how the creative practice one has spent years fostering can impact the world in a meaningful way.

ON MULTIPLYING POSSIBILITIES THROUGH SUBJUGATED KNOWLEDGES

BY DOUGLAS GABRIEL

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Mike Kelley’s Educational Complex, a set of foam core,

fiberglass and wooden models referencing architectural

components of every school the artist ever attended,

was first shown at Metro Pictures in New York in 1995.

Originally, Kelley intended to use a series of drawings of

the infrastructures made from memory as blueprints, but

concluded that they did not contain enough information

to produce three-dimensional models. Photographs were

used to accurately recreate the exteriors of the buildings,

but for the interiors, Kelley used only his inconclusive

drawings as guides, replacing any spaces he could not

remember with solid, obstructing blocks. The project was

part of the artist’s commentary on “Repressed Memory

Syndrome,” a topic generating hysteria in the media at the

time. In cases like the McMartin Preschool Trial, evidence

was asserted that abuse occurred in locations of which the

victim had inadequate or no memories. Kelley responded

to his own inability to remember certain areas within his

school with Abuse Report (1995), in which he filled out a

child abuse report indicting his former teacher, abstract

expressionist painter Hans Hoffmann, for “institutional

abuse of … formalist training.”

Kelley’s act of turning educational “trauma” into physical

barricades imagines a situation where the conflicts and

struggles of art education become physical barriers that

limit the possibilities available for a subject to move

through and act in a space. His impenetrable blocks

impose a deadening, restrictive presence. Discussing

limitations, the theorist Michel de Certeau writes in

his book The Practice of Everyday Life that, despite the

organizing function of barriers, a walker “also moves them

about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting

away, or improvisation of walking privilege[s], transform[s]

or abandon[s] spatial elements” (De Certeau, 98). De

Certeau goes on to cite Charlie Chaplin’s choreography

as an example of such creative modification of the world,

in that the actor “multiplies the possibilities of his cane,”

assigning new meanings and purpose to the object (De

Certeau, 98). This example shows us how the function of

objects and signifiers can be revised through creative lived

experience. Subjects who recognize the transformative

power they exert as agents moving through the world are

able to multiply possibilities for being and acting in multiple

environments, rather than submitting to normative modes.

In this essay I will show how these artists develop what

philosopher Michel Foucault calls “naive knowledges.”

These operate apart from official hierarchies, leading to

new knowledges of the self that diverge from fixed and

established categories. I will then show how this creative

tactic functions to produce what De Certeau calls “poetic

geography,” space that is liberated and transformed by

subjects who actively assign new meanings to otherwise

fixed signs in the world.

Foucault’s postulation of “naive knowledges” began with

his book Madness and Civilization, in which he discussed

how the “Renaissance Madman” was not subjected

to confinement or regarded as suffering from disease.

Rather, this subject was considered to exhibit a potentially

revelatory mode of thought apart from the norm (Foucault,

66). The madman was allowed to produce other forms of

knowledge that could coexist with normative modes of

being. For Foucault, the eventual great confinement of the

mad is evidence of the ways in which official hierarchies of

knowledge began to disable alternate modes of thought.

He identified the use of terms like “pathological” and

“delinquent” as strategies that divide and limit other

modes of thought through a process of total normalization.

The goal is to continuously produce subjects who think

and act only in accord with “correct and functional” modes

of being. The term artist can signify a contemporary

madman, as this nomenclature gives license to violate

social codes and behaviors in ways that are not available

to other roles in society. While the artist might occupy a

high social standing, the knowledge he produces is almost

always relegated to a lowly position in the hierarchy of

ideas, and is rarely taken seriously as official knowledges.

In addition to demonizing terminology, another strategy

Foucault recognized was the tendency to turn self-

knowledge into pure data. an example is the way in

which medical practice uses a person’s performative

but insufficient knowledge of his own body as raw data

from which to make a clinical diagnosis. artists generate

phenomenological knowledge through lived experience,

but hierarchies of ideas insist on the subservient

relationship this discourse has to official knowledges,

like a patient to a doctor. In identifying these strategies of

subjection, Foucault became interested in the knowledges

that have been marginalized throughout history by official

hierarchies of ideas. He called these “naive knowledges”

What characterizes the class of 2012 fine art students

at Columbia College Chicago is their perception

of economic, political and personal barriers as

instruments that propel and multiply the possibilities

of their practices and self knowledge.

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Douglas Gabriel is an artist and critic based in Seoul, South Korea. He is a 2010 graduate of Columbia College Chicago.

De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Print.

Entz, Chuck. “Subimago”. BugGuide.com. Iowa State University Entomology. 19 Feb. 2009. Web. (26 Jan. 2012).

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. United Kingdom: Routledge, 1967. Print.

—. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984. Trans. alan Sheridan. New York and London: Routledge, 1988. Print.

—. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Trans. C. Gordon. Brighton. London: Harvester Press, 1980. Print.

Miller, Toby. The Well Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: St. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Print.

How then do alternative knowledges function to impose

transformation apart from official discourses? De Certeau

describes a transformative tactic evidenced by subjects

who, walking through a city, give new meanings and

associations to street names: “Saints-Peres, Corentin

Celton, Red Square … these names make themselves

available to the diverse meanings given them by

passersby.” These spaces are liberated by the creative

subject who, in reassigning meaning, forces the signs to

“detach themselves from the places they were supposed

to define and serve” (De Certeau, 104). De Certeau depicts

liberated space as a “poetic geography on top of the

geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning.”

The liberating element is the creative act of ascribing new

meanings to signs, which “insinuate other routes into

the functionalist and historical order of movement” (De

Certeau, 105). Like the street signs that become detached

from their original signification, or like Charlie Chaplin’s

cane, official knowledges are always open to modification.

This is the effect of unruly subjects. Though the knowledge

production of artists occupies a lowly position, it can be a

very effective force. artists, like subjects walking through

the city, covertly alter meanings in significant ways. Through

the production of naive knowledges, they dismount

signifiers from fixed definitions and reassign meanings

in the spaces around them. as world leaders gather to

reproduce normative ways of thinking and relating to the

world, the artists in Subimago demonstrate alternatives

available to us through creative, lived experience.

The impervious blocks of traumatic space in Educational

Complex extend from Mike Kelley’s map drawings. Maps,

according to De Certeau, assume an all-seeing birds-eye-

view, similar to Renaissance painters who “represented

the city as seen in a perspective that no eye had yet

enjoyed.” The map fails to correspond with the vantage

point of lived experience, which is inclined to temporary

active mapping or “actions of privilege and agency

which breathe life into—if only for a moment—certain

possibilities” (De Certeau, 98). The artists in Subimago

operate apart from the fictional view from on high, which

turns political, economical and personal traumas and

anxieties into solidified, impenetrable barriers. Instead,

they engage the world though lived experience, actively

multiplying knowledges and possibilities and attaching

new meanings to signs around them. Viewers of this

exhibition are afforded the chance to glimpse, if only

for a moment, a poetic geography outside the official

hierarchies of knowledge;

Through strategies ranging from investigations into the

semantics of visual culture (Kirsa Molina) to performances

that question the limits of knowledge itself (Simon Floeter), blueprints of real and contrived environments

(Julia Mlakar), and research based inquiry of early

twentieth century media and subject matter (Samantha Doyle), among many others, the artists in Subimago offer

viewers an opportunity to experience unconventional ways

of relating to the self and to the world.

The artists’ relationships to the hierarchies of knowledge

stand in sharp relief against the simultaneous presence

of the NaTO summit. The official knowledges descending

upon the city of Chicago isolate and confine counter

knowledges such as the Occupy movement through a

series of permanent security ordinances and surveillance

measures. as political anxiety manifests throughout the

city, the need for new ways of thinking is critical. Foucault

warns that “a transformation that remains within the

same mode of thought … can merely be a superficial

transformation” (Politics, Philosophy, Culture, 155). Protest

and resistance that remains within the same discourse

can even work to secure the position of official knowledges,

as seen in the way the city of Chicago multiplied the

disciplinary authority of its officials on its streets.

because they were ranked beneath scientific modes of

thought: “By subjugated knowledges … I am referring to the

historical contents that have been buried and disguised

in a functionalist coherence or formal systematisation”

(Power/Knowledge, 81–2).

Foucault’s critical approach is archeological in that it

is concerned with uncovering the “historical contents,”

or buried discourses of what Toby Miller calls “unruly

subjects,” as opposed to the “well tempered subjects” that

occupy established categories of knowledge (Miller, 180).

The artists in Subimago function like Foucault’s unruly

historical subjects, actively creating alternative knowl-

edges. This critical method does not result in a singular

emancipating project, but rather calls forth a multitude

of approaches and knowledges.

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JASMINE AL-MASRI Red, Yellow, Orange, and Taupe, 2011. acrylic on found panel. 11" x 4"

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LINDA BENJAMIN Flaccid 2, 2011. Clear rubber-tinted and installed on top of wire. 48" x 36" x 6"

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CHRISTINA DOELLING Uncle Bill’s, 2011. Embroidered Handkerchief. 7" x 7"

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SAMANTHA DOYLE Meat Locker, 2012. Intaglio Print. 7" x 5"

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SHAYNA COTT Tablet, 2011. Cast concrete. 12" x 10" x 8"

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NICK ERNST Pretty Bird, 2011. Etching. 15" x 11"

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BRENT HJERTSTEDT Untitled01, 2012. Digital. 10" x 15"

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DUSTY JAMES Artificially Alive and Marking Time / I Wonder If You Saw Things My Way, 2011. acrylic and sewing patterns and trash on wood. 72" x 96"

GRACE O’BRIEN Smell Boxes, 2012. Wood, plastic, various olfactory materials. 6" x 6" x 5"

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IAN MORRISON The Cock and the Jewel, 2011. Pen and Ink, colored in Photoshop. 12" x 8"

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ADELINE KREIS Birds of Paradise, 2011. Photo, hats, fake flowers, paint, amanda, alayna, Keelah. 16" x 24"

KIRSA MOLINA KIJG705APS(Glimmer), 2011. Styrene. 25.75" x 26"

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EMILY JANE PERKINS Something From Nothing, 2012. Ceramic, hot glue, and paint. 15" x 8" x 5"

SEAN MURPHY Leonard, 2012. Gouache on Panel. 8" x 8" SIMON FLOETER Gesso, 2011. Video. 6:26 minutes

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SIMON FLOETER Gesso, 2011. Video. 6:26 minutes

RYKEYN BAILEY METAMORPHIC SWAY, 2011. Screen print. 15" x 11"

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EROL SCOTT HARRIS {ins.idea.boveout}, 2012. acrylic, oil on wood panel. 22" x 30"

NICOLE FENNELL Untitled, 2011. Cardboard, screw eyes, spray paint, string. 24" x 24"

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JULIA MLAKAR Playscape, 2012. Installation (detail): cardboard, acrylic paint, nails, fishing line. Dimensions variable

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KATIE QUADE in/animate, 2011/2012. Concrete, wire. Dimensions variable

CAITLIN RYAN Drag, 2011. Video

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MATT SCHIEREN Rhapsody in Blue, 2011. Mixed media on paper. 15" x 22"

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KATRINA PETRAUSKAS Untitled, 2011. Manipulated digital image

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CHELSEA SCHNEIDER Untitled, 2012. Mixed media. Dimensions variable

KELLY SCHULz Piano, 2010. Photograph. 16" x 20"

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LIzzY SzWAYA Clay Print One and Two, 2011. Terra cotta clay. Dimensions variable

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The 2012 Fine arts graduates thank the staff, faculty and administration of the a+D Department, the averill and Bernard Leviton a+D Gallery, and the Portfolio Center for their support and assistance over the past years, and especially this year as we prepared for this final exhibition. Special thanks to Doug Gabriel for writing the catalog text, to Shayna Cott for creating our Manifest website, and to Samantha Doyle, Nicole Fennell, and Kirsa Molina for co-curating the exhibition. Thanks to Joan Giroux for organizing.

This exhibition is sponsored by the art + Design Department and the School of Fine and Performing arts at Columbia College Chicago.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NATALIE WALSER Hands, 2011. Cross stitching. 9"

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ar t + designa + D AVERILL AND BERNARD LEVITON

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COLUM.EDU/DEPS

Jasmine Al-Masri

Rykeyn Bailey

Linda Benjamin

Shayna Cott

Christina Doelling

Samantha Doyle

Nick Ernst

Nicole fennell

Simon floeter

Erol Scott Harris

Brent Hjertstedt

Dusty James

Adeline kreis

Julia Mlakar

kirsa Molina

Ian Morrison

Sean Murphy

Grace O’Brien

Emily Jane Perkins

katrina Petrauskas

katie Quade

Caitlin Ryan

Matt Schieren

Chelsea Schneider

kelly Schulz

Lizzy Szwaya

Natalie Walser

Cover:LINDA BENJAMIN Maps, 2011. Clear rubber relief and acrylic paint. 18" x 12"

manifestbfa.virb.com