MFA THESIS EXHIBITION | You've changed | UChicago Arts

Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

2020 MFA Thesis Exhibition: You've changed

November 13 - December 20, 2020

The University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts and Logan Center Exhibitions present the 2020 MFA Thesis Exhibition featuring works by Crystal Beiersdorfer, Madeline Gallucci, Fan Ge, Holden Head, Cameron Mankin, Gabrielle Sanson, Daisy Schultz, and Brett Swenson.

Presented by DoVA and Logan Center Exhibitions with the support of UChicago Arts.

In light of the state of Illinois and city of Chicago’s Stay at Home advisory, public access to the gallery is no longer available effective November 14.

Artists On View

Crystal Beiersdorfer

Crystal Beiersdorfer (b. 1991) is a digital artist whose work exams digital culture and how the digitized world promotes alterations to identity, body, and the psyche. Through a femme perspective, her art showcases how digital culture influences and controls concepts of the ideal femme figure and how pervasive technology has become in our daily lives. Crystal's work also scrutinizes media itself through glitching, pixelization, and other digital manipulation methods, making viewers question the influence that technology has over their personal beliefs and daily routines.

Website | Instagram | Twitter

Selected Works

CALM DOWN! 2019/2020, single-channel digital video, 00:52 min., looped. Access here

FEMME: A Manifesto, 2020, an interactive manifesto (HTML, CSS, jQuery) Access here

Madeline Gallucci

Madeline Gallucci moved to Chicago, IL from Kansas City, MO. Her practice primarily uses painting and sculpture to examine how societal expectations result in both anxieties and celebrations of revealing our authentic selves. She pulls inspiration from internet beauty tutorials and melodrama films where mirrors and screens serve as sites of illusion and personal transformation. By combining saturated colors and economical materials, she calls into question the function of decoration and utility in how we think about our outward appearance and the way we perform everyday.

Website | Instagram

Selected Works

Charmer; pink mirror; I hid so well I forgot I was even there, installation view in the Logan Center Gallery, 2020. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Charmer (detail), 2020. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

I hid so well I forgot I was even there, 2020. Acrylic, ink and flashe on canvas, 42.5 x 51 x 1.5 inches. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

The narrows; We were taking care of an injured dog and talking about how much advertising costs, 2020. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Untitled (cloud), 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 x 1.5 inches. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Fan Ge

Fan Ge is a Chinese artist who was born in Beijing. Fan Ge’s artwork is invested in world-making theory, self-understanding, cultural appropriation and mysticism. His current art practice combines performance and sculptural objects that build an experimental theater of a re-contextualized Japanese and ancient Egyptian fantasy.

Website

Selected Works

I am a mummy also i am..., 2020. Single-channel video, 11:36 min., bench, steel tubes, maple. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. View video here

I am a mummy also i am..., 2020, storyboard.

Holden Head

Holden Head was born and raised in the southern part of the USA. He is too dumb for NYC and too ugly for LA, so he currently lives and works in Chicago. His current work has been mostly figurative and also performative sculpture.

Website

Selected Works

Shame! (brood parasitism), 2020, tar, feathers, vines, plastic mask, 3 x 4 x 3 ft.

Class, 2020, steel, ceramic, 4 x 6 ft.

Gentileschi, 2020, Durham's Rock Hard, ceramic, pubic hair, hot glue, resin, MDF, 20 x 36 in.

theory, 2020, used underwear and socks, hot glue, wood, 3 x 6 ft.

Cameron Mankin

Cameron Mankin (b. 1993) makes prints, artist’s books, and sculptural installations that investigate the role of the archive in the arrangement of public space and personal identity. Drawing from found jpegs and traditional print techniques like woodcut or etching, he approaches delicate systemic problems with a quixotic rigor, setting measurements and catalogs to collapse under their own tremulous weight. The resulting projects vibrate between love letter and biting rebuttal - both addressed to the institution of Rationality.

Website

Selected Works

CVaCCTvCA, 2019-2020. Inkjet collage, pen, and graphite on paper, 5.115 x 8.25 in. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

CVaCCTvCA #006, 2019-2020. Inkjet collage, pen, and graphite on paper, 5.115 x 8.25 in. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

CVaCCTvCA #012, 2019-2020. Inkjet collage, pen, and graphite on paper, 5.115 x 8.25 in. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

COVID Atlas (6104 S Woodlawn), 2020. Graphite, acrylic, permanent marker, and woodcut on paper, custom pedestal, dimensions variable. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

COVID Atlas (6104 S Woodlawn) (detail), 2020. Graphite, acrylic, permanent marker, and woodcut on paper, custom pedestal, dimensions variable. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Gabrielle Sanson

Gabrielle Sanson's work centers on impressions of the psychic and emotional complex that stems from living in a socially and politically fraught landscape. With this, she examines subjectivity as it emerges and develops in the seclusion of domestic life. Through painting and sculpture, her practice is driven by the potential to map the nodes where memory, conventionality, and hindsight intersect. Working from personal experience outward to a body of global concerns, she engages the domestic milieu and the objects of interiors as both tangible and conceptual material.

Website

Selected Works

(L-R): Guard hut, 2019-20; Burglar bar (working out the time difference), 2019; Not knowing painting, 2019-20. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Guard hut, 2019, oil and acrylic on canvas, nails, 52 x 40.6 cm. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Not knowing painting, 2019-20. Oil on canvas, 90.8 x 147.2 cm (35.7 x 58 in.). Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

The function of forgetting, 2020. Oil and acrylic on canvas, nails, 137 x 181 cm (53.9 x 71.3 in.). Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

At the window (after Westerik), 2019-20. oil on canvas, 85 x 100 cm (33.4 x 39.3in.). Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Daisy Schultz

Daisy Schultz has a background in chemistry and worked in a biochemical lab for three years before starting her MFA. From this phase of life she developed a fascination with the radical fragility of the human body on both micro and macroscopic scales. She works mainly in photgraphic- and time-based media.

Website | Instagram

Selected Works

Attachment #4, 2020, archival inkjet prints, MDF, 16 x 100 x 16 in. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Attachment #6, 2020, archival inkjet prints, MDF, 16 x 16 x 16 in. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Attachment #3, 2020, archival inkjet prints, MDF, 16 x 100 x 16 in. Installation view in the Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Trap, 2020, stainless steel, archival inkjet prints, 48 x 48 x 84 in. Installation view in the Logan Center. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman

Brett Swenson

Brett Swenson makes art to explore the felt mechanics of seeing and perceiving. His works track an interest in permeability and containment, where apparent opposites in contact physically rework each other to create new and relationally expressive forms. He works primarily in sculpture and video.

Website

Selected Works