bamboo scaffolding

Two Columns is pleased to announce bamboo scaffolding , an exhibition curated by guest curator Wassan Al-Khudhairi.  The exhibition opens this Saturday, November 8, from 6 to 8pm, and runs until December 5, 2014.

The exhibit features work from students in Fine Arts.

Please come to the opening  reception to hear a curatorial statement by the guest curator, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, at 6:30pm This event is free and open to the public.

About the Curator:

Wassan Al-Khudhairi is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art. She holds a Master of Arts with Distinction in Islamic Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Georgia State University.

Al-Khudhairi was previously Co-Artistic Director at the Gwangju Biennale Foundation in South Korea, where she collaborated on the curation of the ninth edition of the Gwangju Art Biennale. During her tenure, she contributed the exhibition catalogue and a number of essays including Thoughts on Revisiting Histories, an essay for the Gwangju Biennale Roundtable.

Prior to her time in South Korea, Al-Khudhairi served as the Founding Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, which she helped to establish from the ground up. At Mathaf, she spearheaded the development of the institutional vision and strategic plan and initiated the cultivation of community relationships and support of the Museum. Among the exhibitions Al-Khudhairi curated were Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art and Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab, and collaborated with fellow scholars and guest curators on a number of projects.

She completed the Museum Leadership Institute program at the Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University and, in 2014, participated in the Independent Curators International Curatorial Intensive in New York.

Al-Khudhairi has lectured around the world on the subject of modern and contemporary art, specifically related to the Middle East. Other past experience includes positions at the Brooklyn Museum and the High Museum of Art.

'Close Quarters': first two official rehearsals of collaborative project

Two Columns is pleased to present the first two official rehearsals for "Close Quarters," a new collaboration between sculptor Nathan Wilson, Professor of Music at New College of Florida Mark Dancigers, Fuzión Dance Artists Artistic Director Leymis Bolaños Wilmott, and REVoultions Dance Artistic Director Dwayne Scheuneman. The open to the public rehearsals will take place: Wednesday, October 29th 12-m-1pm

Wednesday, November 5th 12pm-1pm

These rehearsals will be the first time the sculptor and dancers come together in the same space, with props, to begin choreographing this new physically integrated piece. Nathan Wilson's sculptures will be open to the public October 29- November 5th, 2014

Mercury is spinning forward

Two Columns is pleased to present Mercury is spinning forward. The installation is the outcome of 14 continuous hours of vigorous multi-disciplinary collaboration of diverse students from the community.

Please come to the reception on Friday October 10th. The exhibition will be open to the public  
October 8th - October 17th, 2014.

The idea of this exhibition came from two distinct needs in the community. First, was the need to explore the possibilities of the gallery space as a location for creation. The roll of the gallery as a 'white cube' is changing rapidly in the contemporary art world, and with access to the Two Columns gallery space, we felt compelled to explore its capacities. The second came from the need to involve students from all disciplines with the Fine Arts gallery, making the space more available and familiar to them.

As a student run space, the more students participate, the more they will want to partake in exhibitions, and hopefully enlivening both the gallery and culture.

Collaboration is complicated, and throughout the installation diverse and challenging ideas and situations arose, but this only exercised our limitations as artists and put the individual in perspective.

We hope this exhibition mirrors how the explosion of our creativity coalesced into a nebula of ingenuity.

Participants:

Celia Garcia Nogales	Fine Arts
Glenna Dame Baker	Fine Arts
Ruzica Ivanovic	Fine Arts
Michael Cano	Photography
Peggy Blount	Fine Arts
Chris Phelps	Computer Animation
Tyler Shea	Advertising Design
David Allin Reese	Graphic Design
Henri Scribner	Illustration
Kyler Duhe	Fine Arts
Stephanie Kroth	Fine Arts
Alonso Vasquez	Film
Maurice L. Mullinax	Fine Arts
Alma del Valle	Illustration
Alexis Schultz	Photography alumni
Careth Arnold	Fine Arts
Miriam Colombero	Illustration
Jose Carlos Zavarse	Photography
Irene Garibay	Fine Arts

   

Placebo

Two Columns is pleased to present "Placebo" an exhibition featuring photographs from Photography and Digital Imaging seniors Kelly Machado, Mirella Martinez, Rob Fehere, Ferenc Belaznay, Abril Sicarios and Jose Zavarse. Please come to the reception on Friday, September 19, 6-8pm.  The exhibition will be open to the public September 15 - September 26, 2014.

Placebo aims to deconstruct the surplus of photographic stimulus in the media by giving a saturated experience to the audience yet involving content that make every photograph a particular viewing experience.

Assiduous Applications

Two Columns is pleased to present "Assiduous Applications," an exhibition featuring the artwork of Faculty and Staff from the Fine Arts Department at Ringling College of Art + Design.  Please come to the reception on Friday, September 5, 6-8pm.  The exhibition will be open to the public September 3 - September 12, 2014.

The exhibition includes recent artworks by Jeff Schwartz, Vicky Randall, Claudia Cumbie-Jones & Lance Ford Jones, Shawn Pettersen, Nathan Skiles, Patrick Lindhardt, Michael Wyshock, Hugh Davies and Mark Anderson.

Flying a Sign

Two Columns is pleased to present "Flying a Sign", a solo exhibition of artworks by Sally Pettibon.  Please come to the reception for the exhibition Friday, August 22, from 6-8pm.  The exhibition is open August 20 -29.  Gallery hours are Wednesday through Friday, 12- 3pm, and Saturday, 11am- 4pm.

Ms. Pettibon is an internationally exhibited photographic artist with numerous exhibitions and awards including Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, CIAC Gallery in Brittany France, Florida Center for Contemporary Art in Tampa, FL. Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida, Ringling Museum of Art and the Appelton Museum of Art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Ringling Museum of Art , Center for Fine Art Photography and the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art. Private collections in New York, California, Connecticut, and Florida.

Ms. Pettibon has been a full time faculty member of the Photography and Digital Imaging department at the Ringling College of Art and Design since 2003. She has taught at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in France and is a former staff photographer for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and freelance editorial photographer in New York and Florida.

Call Me When You Get There

"Call Me When You Get There" is the final exhibition and send off for sixteen senior Fine Arts majors majors and minors! This exhibition includes works in sculpture, painting, video, printmaking, and drawing.

Artists in Show: Jacquelyn Alexis, Katie Aucoin, Javier Aparente, Shannon Chong, Lauren Eisenburger, Adrian Harris, Cutter Hume, Natalie Lerner, Makar Malinouski, Leah McMacken, Maggie Moody, Jennifer Pappas, Paige Ramsay, Bianca Rylee, Zachary See, and Hunter Slade. 

Please come to the opening Friday, April 25th from 6-8pm.  The exhibition is open April 25 - May 3, Tuesday-Friday, 12-3pm, Saturday 11-4.

Motion Machine

Two Columns is pleased to announce Motion Machine, an exhibition of time-based artworks from students at Ringling College of Art and Design.  Please come to the reception Friday, April 18, from 7-9pm.  The exhibition is open April 15-19, 2014 during regular gallery hours, Tuesday – Friday, 12-3pm and Saturday, 11-4pm.

Featuring artists: Corey Allen, Muriel Holloway, Jennifer Pappas, Alexis Macchia, Anastasia Rostarchuk, Nadia Valenti, Ben Stoddard, Miguel Diaz, Peggy Blount, Alexander Keller, Joshua Hines, Lauren Eisenburger, Tammy Zeitler, Danielle Colon, Maurice Mullinax, and  Hunter Taylor Slade.

#nofilter

Ringling College of Art and Design and the Two Columns Gallery are proud to present #nofilter – A Fine Arts Senior Thesis Exhibition featuring the works of Katie Aucoin, Bianca Rylee, and Hunter Slade. The title #nofilter references our society’s obsession with social media, and how Instagram turned everyone into overnight artists, photographing their every waking moment. The decision to not add a filter to the photograph, thereby not altering it’s imperfections and mediocre reality, is then stamped with a #nofilter. All three artists’ approach their work with a similar mindset; creating the work in the moment, with raw and unfiltered content and emotion. This show consists of a wide range of media including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. 


Please come to the Opening Reception Friday, April 4th, 6 - 8 PM.  The exhibition is open April 4-April 12.  There is also a panel discussion with the artists, Wednesday, April 9th, 11:00 AM - noon.  Gallery hours are Wednesday-Friday 12-3pm and Saturday 11am-4pm.

Between

“Between” is a Fine Art Senior Thesis Exhibition by Adrian Harris, Cutter Hume, Jacquelynn Barli, and Makary Malinouski.

Please come to the Opening Reception March 21, 2014, 6-8pm.  The exhibition is open March 21- 28.

Gallery hours are Wednesday-Friday 12-3pm and Saturday 11am-4pm.

"Between" is an exploration of ways of perception and paradigms through the physical processes of art making. Interpreting, observing, representing, seeing, touching, forming, moulding are the actions that weave a thread through their works. Each of the artists creates between states, whether it is through abstraction and representation, touch and sight, standard and alternative, or figure and ground.

About the artists:

Cutter Hume's sculptures are about the metaphorical “running the gauntlet” and arriving at a similar yet different conclusion.  These works serve as a way to cheat said gauntlet and come prepared with the needed knowledge to beat it.  Cutter seeks to explore this circumventing of standard thought through the use these objects.

Makary Malinouski depicts objects on a canvas cloth. In and of themselves, there is no inherent power to the mundane objects, but rather the power is found in placing them and representing on an illusory space, in which everything that is depicted, is done so by the choice of the artist. The presence of the unpainted white canvas serves as a constant reminder of this illusory quality and detaches one of the containment of a still-life through inward rather than outward means. The video serves as a dematerialization of the process, underlying the ephemeral quality of the space, while suggesting a more objective plane in comparison to painting.

Adrian Harris makes work to address the fluctuation of meaning and meaninglessness within our experiences. The abstract forms he paints are suggestions of representational images which the viewer uses to interpret meaning. Each viewer interprets different representations; where one sees a child at play another sees an animal eating, then both come to a conclusion of what these depictions could mean. However, it is often the case with Adrian’s work that neither the depictions nor their meanings actually exist; it’s just paint. His intention is to address the role subjectivity plays in the creation and interpretation of meaning

Jacquelynn Barli’s body of work explores concepts of connection through ambiguous figural abstractions of touch. Jacquelynn chose a group of women who have touched her life, using an image of their face as well as her own to create each figure. Each piece is built with strong textures and layers. The intention being to show the physical interaction between artists hand and the textured surface as well as the viewer exploring the materials and underlying layers up close and personal. 

About You

About You is a Fine Arts Senior Thesis Exhibition featuring the works of Shannon Chong, Paige Ramsay, Leah McMacken, Lauren Eisenburger and Javier Aparente. The show explores collective identities and an individual’s quest for belonging. Driven by personal and respective histories, the works of these five young artists act as a response to self awareness. The result makes the artists realize their integration, as well as their alienation, from a specific social environment.
Through sculptures, installations, performances, prints and time based pieces, the artists use their personal identities to talk about society. The artists talk about the falsehood of freedom, the need to belong and being recognized for what they truly are and forming part of a collective or nature at large. These attributes ultimately make it a show coming deeply from the artists. 

Please come to the Opening Reception, February 28th, 2014, 6-8pm.  The exhibition is open from February 28 until March 7, 2014.  Gallery hours are Wednesday-Friday 12-3pm and Saturday 11am-4pm.

Unreal Estate

February 11- February 21, 2014

Zachary See, Maggie Moody, Natalie Lerner and Jennifer Pappas.

Unreal Estate focuses on the location and emotion elements of physical objects in order to compose an experience as a separate state of being. Looking at examples of both paintings and sculpture, each artist is investigating both past and present experiences that culminate to describe personal shards reality. The exhibit1on is conceived as an open house, to explore a series of collective experiences that invite audiences to then develop fresh ideas about the structure of abstraction. These works will sketch out the intersections between art making and experiences with located memory. Through the process of selection and production, Zachary See has developed a practice based on simple comforts and the complexities of a contemporary American dream. Through the act of a crafted selection, highly artificial color and consumer products describe a synthetic, manufactured experience with an interpretation. Inversely, the manipulation of raw materials suggests both a hands-on involvement and mastery of craft that describes the personal and intimate relationships we have with objects and experiences. Maggie Moody's work is influenced from elements of home and mid-century modern architecture. Using the process of reduction and manipulation she then creates a new experience based on these formal qualities focusing on line, shape, color and space and their new possible relationships to each other while creating a balance between them. The works that Natalie Lerner presents in this exhibition center around encounters with others in her time away from her native home of Florida. She creates a psychological map of her experience by housing elements of the individual conversations and environments in a multitude of forms. By using a range of mediums and language devices, she carefully crafts an encapsulated moment for her viewers. Jennifer Pappas paints invented landscapes that dep1ct a similar event occurring in many different locations. The imagery is kept ambiguous allowing for a reality that references natural elements while exploring principles of direction, exploratory mark making, gravity, and heavy layering techniques.

Gesticulating

Curated by Dan Cameron

January 17- February 7, 2014

Stephanie Kroth, Peggy Blount, Irene Garibay Sanchez, Leah McMacken, Shannon Chong, Paige Ramsa, Bianca Rylee, Adrian Harris, Hunter Slade, Zachary See, Corey Allen, Makary Malinouski, Natalie Lerner and Kyler Duhe.

GESTICULATIONS
 by Dan Cameron

Although a gesticulation is typically understood to be a physical gesture that accompanies verbal speech, nearly any kind of nonverbal flourish will actually fit the bill. The Free Dictionary defines it as “a deliberate, vigorous motion or gesture,” which comes closer to explaining why it has been chosen on the present occasion for a title. Something peculiar about the concept of gesticulations is that they don’t quite rank, in and of themselves, as fragments of language, not even the nonverbal variety, but rather as a subterranean sub-language: they couldn’t possibly be mistaken for the main event.
And yet why not? We live in age of such brashly simplified overstatement that the notion of a gesture that never aspires to be more than a small part of a much larger thing has an appealing humility to it.  An example might be Leah McMacken’s In the Woods, a photograph whose clear origins within a performance setting suggests its place within a sequential order of related images, whose absence speaks volumes. Corey Allen’s video LOSSY!!, made up of fragments of found video edited together as syncretic shapes and textures, blurs the distinction between personal memory and crowd-sourced anonymity.
Within the visual vocabulary of painting, gesticulation can signify a broad array of possible strategies for building a picture. The loosely brushed rectangles in Kyler Duhe’s painting Aileen resemble threatening weather fronts looming over the continental North America. Peggy Blount’s small green painting Desire uses the visual language of surrealism and fantasy to conjure a version of the uncanny, in which the distinction between vegetation, animal and human life become disturbingly blurred. Stephanie Kroth’s A Place I’ll Go is large colorful street scene rendered in semi-outline using broad swaths of paint, while her Moss is a small dark abstraction that seems to be folding in on itself. Makary Malinouski’s still life paintings, Roller, Lighter and Pear and Shoe incorporate the visual vocabulary of contemporary consumer objects, but the graphic white outline separating each object from its background underscores the artificiality of the entire construct.
Not all pictorial artworks consist of a flat canvas with dried pigment. Paige Ramsay’s Bees Sting is a hand-embroidered textile work, in which the figurative content nearly merges with the background of budding blossoms. Using tar as a binding element, Hunter Slade layers his with a gestural spontaneity that recalls the rubbled surfaces of 1950s Abstract Expressionism, but sprinkled with a peculiarly 21^st century angst. Adrian Harris’ The Black Horse functions both as a large drawing on unstretched canvas, as well as a frame-like sculptural object within which the same canvas has been suspended from the corners using twine.
In the sculptural realm, any gesticulating impulse becomes automatically slowed down, suspended in the framework of three-dimensional space. This is even true in the case of a wall installation such as Shannon Chong’s Finding and Losing Ourselves, in which a few dozen tiny wooden boats appear to transport curry from the right side of the wall – the ‘Orient’ – to the ‘West Indies’ segment of the wall on the left.  Similarly, Natalie Lerner’s work starts from the point of view of a painter, but the three-dimensional form of a dancing stool, like that of the painted ‘pool’ lying on the floor, literally extends her spatial possibilities into the viewer’s immediate proximity.
Irene Garibay Sanchez’s Deeper than Guts is a handmade book, each page of which has been saturated with watercolor, and assigned plate numbers, as if cataloging specimens from a natural history collection. Zachary See’s mischievously titled She’s the One, a relief diptych in which two arrows protrude from what appear to be female breasts, manages a difficult juggling act between two contradictory meanings: a witty rendition of Cupid’s arrow targeting a pair of hapless lovers, and the more problematic depiction of the male of the species’ unchecked urge to slay the object of its desire.

Leah McMacken,  In the Woods

 

    Kyler Duhe, Aileen

 
Makary Malinouski, Roller, Lighter and Pear

    Natalie Lerner, Moon Pool 

 

    Zachary See, She's the One