March 18, 2008: Exhibits at MCP
Continuing This Month
Barbara Cummard
|
EJ Major
|
Frank Rodick
|
Bastienne Schmidt
|
ICY: Clear Views 02:
Barbara Cummard, EJ Major, Frank Rodick, and Bastienne Schmidt
February 16 to April 27, 2008
Related Events
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 16
5:30 p.m. Artist Panel
7 - 9 p.m. Opening Reception
MCP presents its second ICY exhibition, an annual series exploring linked portfolios of work by three to five contemporary artists. The 2008 ICY artists are: Barbara Cummard (lives in Minneapolis), EJ Major (London, England), Frank Rodick (Toronto, Ontario), and Bastienne Schmidt (New York City). Although the exhibition includes only five individual works, there will be more than our usual number of pieces on the wall, as the pieces are all comprised of multiple images displayed as visual arrays. These assembled, multi-image works appear in various configurations: all on one sheet, as in Barbara Cummard's six-feet tall by twenty-feet long panel; in strict grid patterns as with Frank Rodick's two works and EJ Major's harrowing self-portraits; and strewn across a wall as in Bastienne Schmidt's Schattenheimat work, which she has configured especially for two of our walls. This exhibition makes excellent use of MCP's high ceilings and open gallery plan.
The "polyptychs" (as Rodick refers to his pieces) of ICY 02 reflect an understanding of photography as a medium of multiples, and of many points of view that can meld to form an aggregate statement. All of the artists this year are also concerned, to varying degrees, with psychological and spiritual issues surfacing or latent in their work. The grid performs well in this respect, as there are so many facets to personality and character.
Barbara Cummard is an award winning English photographer and visual artist, who has lived in Minnesota for the last 16 years. She has worked extensively as a designer and producer of community art projects which have included a 20 foot mural, a sculpture garden made from collected driftwood, a giant web strung between poles, and a dream room. Cummard has used her photography as a tool to enter worlds that might otherwise be inaccessible, to question the underlying essence of what is there, and to further explore what it is to be fully human. The veiling/unveiling or the shedding of outward appearance has been an integral part of a number of projects that have included explorations of gender and tattoo cultures. In this her latest project, Inside Out: Faces of Self, she combines her collaborative approach with mask making and photography to create a composite photographic mural that stretches across 20 feet of wall space.
EJ Major trained as a photographer and social scientist, with a particular interest in anthropology and gender studies. The concerns that inform her work are rooted in questions of identity and in how we are constructed as human beings - by biology, society and circumstance - and in the lexicon of languages we must adapt to and adopt to survive. EJ Major's materials began with the personal - letters, diary excerpts, and family snap-shots, and now include their public equivalents - films, books and magazine articles. Some pieces are produced in complete isolation, such as Marie Claire RIP, and others involve the collaboration of strangers, like the postcard series Love Is &.... Her driving concerns remain constant: an exploration of the individual as a physical and psychological collage; a study of the ways in which we are simultaneously created and self-creating, of the way our worlds and our selves entwine.
Frank Rodick is a Canadian photographer currently based in Toronto. In the 1990s he studied photography with Henry Gordillo at Ryerson University where he completed his first body of work, Liquid City. In this series of 40 photographs, Rodick re-imagined the contemporary city not as a specific location but as a personal vision and state of mind. From 1995-97, Rodick completed another series, sub rosa, in which he explored a traditional subject-the nude figure-using nontraditional processes to aesthetically fuse elements of ambiguity, tension, and mystery. Rodick's multi-media body of work entitled Arena (2002-2005), attracted critical attention from a number of sources, including selection for the Discoveries exhibition at FotoFest in 2006. His latest and ongoing project, Faithless Grottoes, builds on the spirit of Arena and integrates digital with traditional photographic techniques. Rodick has exhibited in North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East, and his work may be found in numerous public collections.
Bastienne Schmidt is a German born and New York based fine art photographer. Her photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center of Photography, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others. Her photographs have also been published in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Time, Fortune, and Newsweek. In 1996 she had a one person exhibit at the International Center of Photography in New York of her project Vivir la Muerte, which received the Kodak Award in 1996. A book by the same name was published in 1996. In 1997 she published her second book, American Dreams and then her third book ShadowHome in 2005. ShadowHome was awarded The Best Photo Book Prize in Germany and the project has been exhibited internationally. Her current project Home Still Life will be published in 2008. This project consists of a series of large-scale photographs and drawings taking a look at domestic gender role and identity and is influenced and informed by commercial photography from the fifties and sixties which depict life at-home women in different poses of domesticity and gender stereotypes.
