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May Issue 2010
The University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Features Works by Art Students
Each spring, the Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (NC) presents New Currents in Contemporary Art, an exhibition of works by graduating UNC-Chapel Hill master of fine arts students, on view through May 23, 2010.
Marking the culmination
of a two-year program, this exhibition introduces four emerging
artists who interpret ideas ranging from the personal to the political
in a wide variety of media, styles, and approaches. Curated by
Lauren Sanford, Graduate Intern at the Ackland who is pursuing
her PhD in Art History at UNC-Chapel Hill, New Currents in
Contemporary Art features the work of artists T. Coke Whitworth,
Jessica Dupuis, Kia Mercedes Carscallen, and Emily Scott Beck.
As a father of two young children, T. Coke Whitworth is keenly
aware of the various implications of psychological and emotional
inheritance, both positive and negative. In the exhibit he explores
these issues in a series of ten color photographs depicting various
images from the rural area of North Carolina where he was raised.
Surprising and evocative, these images investigate the various
and complex dynamics of heritage and heredity.
Jessica Dupuis' most recent work evolves from an experimental
process that involves the combination of clay and discarded materials,
such as cardboard boxes and newspaper. Dupuis then fires these
forms, leaving only a wafer thin porcelain shell. These fragile
and ephemeral works explore the nature of method and form.
In Kia Mercedes Carscallen's dynamic multimedia installation Systemic,
a shifting and grotesque face appears projected onto a post-colonial
bed. The image serves as an invitation to examine the present
through ideologies past. Challenging socially conditioned "norms"
constructed through race, class, gender, and sexuality, Carscallen's
work addresses the complexities of contemporary identity.
The exhibition features four multi-media works by Emily Scott
Beck, including Churn, a video of women speaking while
submerged in water. Although these women physically struggle to
speak, the experience gives them license to explicitly express
their feelings. Other works by Beck include an audio installation
in the Museum's permanent Early Modern gallery Art and the Religious
World. Featuring recordings of people speaking about their belief
and disbelief in God, this work creates a unique multimedia experience
within the context of familiar pieces from a different era.
The Ackland Art Museum is located on the historic campus of The
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an academic unit
of the University, the Ackland serves broad local, state, and
national constituencies. The Ackland Collection consists of more
than 15,500 works of art, featuring significant collections of
European masterworks, twentieth-century and contemporary art,
North Carolina's premier collections of Asian art and works of
art on paper (drawings, prints, and photographs), as well as African
art and North Carolina pottery and folk art.
For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery
listings, call the Museum at 919/966-5736 or visit (www.ackland.org).
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