press release
The Graduate Fine Arts department at the University of Pennsylvania presents Holding Pattern, an offsite exhibition of the graduating MFA class of 2019. Bringing together artists working across disciplines, the exhibition will be on view July 26 through August 9 at Studio 10 gallery in Bushwick.
The opening reception will take place on Friday July 26th from 6-9pm.
Gallery hours: Thursday-Sunday, 1pm-6pm
Holding Pattern
Ken Lum
Holding Pattern showcases the work of the newly graduated Master of Fine Arts students from the Department of Fine Arts of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. The artists are Anthony Cerilli, Rami George, Nova Gothlin, Fields Harrington, Zach Hill, Danielle Kovalski, Carolyn Lazard, Xiaoxuan Liu, E. Aaron Ross, Fred Schmidt-Arenales and Mengda Zhang.
Making contemporary art is a complicated yet exciting pursuit. It is one that can open up space for new critical thought and expressing bodily affect. Art is important because it can generate knowledge not only in the realm of material production but also in the realm of possibilities. Holding Pattern is a testament to a group of emerging artists who may still be developing their artistic language but who have learned to embrace new ways of thinking about the world that are simultaneously experimental, political, and spiritual—in other words, they are engaged in new possibilities for understanding what it means to be citizens of the world.
The work included in this exhibition is a reflection not only of their sense of the world but also their understanding of the role and function of art in the context of an intensifying global exchange of ideas and commodities. Their work must also be seen as an expression of their collectivity, which is diverse in race, economic class, gender and sexual identification. Indeed, Holding Pattern recognizes that diversity is a fundamental condition for cross-cultural exchange.
The exhibition acknowledges the potential of innovative forms to open new ways of perceiving and being perceived. The art on display cannot exist separately from the embodiment that manifests their actuality as material entities in the world. Further, all kinds of new information technologies are constantly emerging to augment and complicate new subjectivities that are forced to negotiate the relationship between material embodiment and new realities. Holding Pattern addresses these realities in thoughtful and emotional ways.
Lastly, this exhibition represents a debut of sorts for the artists within it, no longer fettered by their status as pedagogical and institutional subjects. Their work here serves as a subversive force in respect of their former lives as graduate students. After all, the milieu of university life can contribute to an academic ideology that often keeps art separate from the experiences of everyday life. Holding Pattern is an exhibition about entering into the world through the conduit of contemporary art. But more so, it is an exhibition about new eyes and voices and new ways of seeing and addressing the world.