The Museum of Failure
Caitlin Cass (The Great Moments in Western Civilization Cooperative)
January 30th – February 23rd
Caitlin Cass calls herselves the Great Moments in Western Civilization Cooperative. The cooperative makes comics, drawings, and museums that folklorize the Western Canon. Fueled by humanity’s urgent, often ill-fated, desire to reach beyond itself, they strive to expose, honor and commiserate in a history riddled with mistakes and uncertainty.
The Museum of Failure is the Cooperative’s ongoing ever-evolving art installation come historical exhibition. It collects comics, drawings, embroidery, text, paintings, video and sculpture into a maze-like art installation that folklorizes the blunders of Western History. Watch an inventor fall to his death attempting to fly. See an ancient library go up in flames. Far from cold criticism, this exhibit strives to honor and commiserate with historical figures, inspiring viewers with every gallant misstep. Each installation of the Museum of Failure is unique and site-specific. This rendition of the Museum takes full advantage of the Hartnett Gallery’s triangular shape and centers around an embroidered Tapestry of Failure.
Caitlin Cass grew up outside of Chicago and after spending much of her youth impersonating disaster victims for the local historical society she retreated to Santa Fe to study luminiferous aether and the Socratic method in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. She started making work under the moniker the Great Moments in Western Civilization Cooperative in 2007 and has since made artwork that folklorizes the Western Canon. She holds a Bachelors degree in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College and an MFA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo. She’s held artist residencies at Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium and Contemporary Artists Center Woodside in Troy, NY. Recent shows include This is Not a Museum: Portable and Lurking at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C and Art-of-Fact, a fictional history exhibit that toured Canadian museums for the bicentennial celebration of the War of 1812.
“Deconstructing Scapes”
Zahra Nazari
December 5th to January 19th
Zahra Nazari was born and raised in Iran and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Art & Architecture, Tabriz, Iran in July 2007. She moved to the United States in 2011 to pursue her master studies in fine arts and establish her career as an artist. Currently she lives in New Paltz, NY, where she is an MFA student in Painting/Drawing. She also teaches printmaking and acts as lecture coordinator for the art department at State University of New York, New Paltz, NY.
While residing in Iran, Nazari was highly influenced by her visits to the ruins of ancient historical sites. Nazari’s move to America brought about a series of paintings that contain metaphors for the unsettled sensations formed when living in a dissimilar culture. These paintings merge her feelings for ancient and modern architectural forms with floating, collapsing and shifting environments. The results are fictitious structures situated within imaginary landscapes.
During 2012, Nazari was awarded an artist’s residency fellowship at the at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, UT, and she was also an artist in residence at the International School of Painting, Drawing, & Sculpture in Umbria, Italy. In 2013 she was awarded an artist’s residency grant by the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, as well as a Platte Clove artist’s residency in Arkville, NY.
Nazari’s work is in several private collections, and her works have been exhibited internationally in both Iran & Italy. In 2012 her work was shown at the Illinois Institute of Art, Woman Made Gallery and Zhou B Art center all in Chicago, IL, Clifton Cultural Arts Center and Manifest Gallery both in Cincinnati, OH and the Wieden+Kennedy Gallery, Portland, OR . In 2013 she exhibited at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, the Painting Center and SUNY Global Center both in New York, NY, Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ and at the Shainberg Gallery, Memphis, TN. Her next solo exhibit is scheduled for The Museum of Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA, in 2015.
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“Traverse”
An installation by Carlie Trosclair
October 24 – November 17, 2013 – Hartnett Gallery, University of Rochester
Artist’s talk: Thursday. October 24, 4:00-5:00 pm, Gowen Room, Wilson Commons, River Campus
Opening Reception in the Gallery: Thursday, October 24, 5:00-7:00 pm
Hartnett Gallery is proud to present Traverse, an installation by Carlie Trsoclair.Traverse will open in the Hartnett Gallery on Thursday, October 24th and will be on display through November 17th. Carlie Trosclair will give a talk about her work on Thursday, October 17th at 4:00pm in Gowen Room in Wilson Commons. An opening reception will take place in the gallery following the artist’s talk from 5:00pm to 7:00pm. All events are free and open to the public.
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Carlie Trosclair’s site-sensitive installations aim to bridge the gap between the human body and the surrounding environment through the recreation and manipulation of existing spaces. Using pliable materials such as fabric and wallpaper, her work re-creates the topographical components of the existing architecture into cavernous landscapes that are both contrasting and complimentary to its current state. The space is given a new “skin” that re-structures it both physically and psychologically. By addressing each place with an architectonic and bodily sensibility, the material reconstructs the existing environment into a multi–dimensional re-imagined reality that engineers an experience focused on the visceral and sensorial elements of embodied perception. Trosclair’s work explores how we come to perceive space and the affect our environments have on our understanding of reality- that which has been constructed for us, and that which is possible to imagine.
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Carlie Trosclair was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana and currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri. Trosclair has exhibited regionally and nationally creating site-specific installations in galleries, universities, abandoned domestic spaces, and as temporary public artworks. Trosclair earned an MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, a BFA from Loyola University New Orleans, and is a Fellow of the Community Arts Training Institute. Trosclair is the recipient of a 2013 Regional Arts Commission Artists Support Grant, Creative Stimulus Grant and the 2012 Riverfront Times MasterMind Award. Trosclair has completed artist residencies at ACRE (WI), Vermont Studio Center (VT), chashama-chaNorth (NY), Woodside Contemporary Artists Center (NY), and The Luminary Center for the Arts (MO). Her next solo exhibition will be featured at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans this December.
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Alumni Exhibition
University of Rochester class of 1963
October 10 – 13
The exhibiting artists are Bonnie Barney, Norm Dubin, Robert Pincus, Robert Sokol, David Sussman, and George Wingate.
Bonnie Barney paints watercolors on location. She has rendered many far-ranging places including the Upper Amazon, the Mediterranean coast of Spain, a cloud forest in Costa Rica, the Gulf of California, the Okavango Delta, and vineyards above Keuka Lake.
Norm Dubin examines nature through a skewed lens. His process involves photographic exposure, digital modification and imagination. Norm’s photographs are snipped, collaged, digitally tailored, embellished, embroidered, and superimposed upon each other.
Robert Pincus’ photographs have received critical acclaim from Philippe Halsman and Mary Ellen Mark who commented, “He has a wonderful eye and a great sense of humor.” Robert has a substantial collection of cameras (more than 1,000) and vintage photographs (daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, cabinet cards, cartes des visites, tintypes and gem tintype albums).
Robert Sokol creates what he calls “creative abstracts”: compelling, involving images, which visually, intellectually and emotionally stimulate. He generates these abstracts using brushes, filters and an extensive range of digital tools.
David Sussman’s travel photographs document the beauty and freedom of the American landscape. He often shares his images with family and friends and is excited to exhibit them for a larger audience.
George Wingate is forever searching out meaning. He is interested in the relationship between text and image. In particular, his work explores the meaning of words and the power of images. Ever since his undergraduate sculpture class with Arch Miller, George has had a preoccupation with space and its connection to nature and things.
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William Kentridge
Seven Fragments for Georges Méliès with Journey to the Moon and Day for Night
September 12th-29th, 2013
The Hartnett Gallery would like to announce the following exhibition:
“7 Fragments for Georges Méliès,” “Journey to the Moon,” and “Day for Night”
A video installation by William Kentridge
September 12-29, 2013 – Hartnett Gallery, University of Rochester
Panel and Opening Reception—Thursday September 19, 2013
Panel: Gowen Room, Wilson Commons, University of Rochester, 1:30 p.m.
Reception: Hartnett Gallery, Wilson Commons, University of Rochester (following panel)
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The Hartnett Gallery is proud to present “7 Fragments for Georges Méliès,” “Journey to Moon,” and “Day for Night,” a suite of films by acclaimed South African contemporary artist William Kentridge. The exhibition runs from September 12 – 29. The artist reception at the Hartnett on September 19 will follow a 1:30 p.m. panel discussion of Kentridge’s work in the visual arts and film, with a special emphasis on its South African Context and the installation in Hartnett.
Part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Kentridge’s animated films explore the allure of early cinema. “7 Fragments,” “Journey to the Moon,” and “Day for Night” (2003) pay homage to French filmmaker and illusionist Georges Méliès (Maries Georges Jean Méliès 1861–1938). Whimsical and enchanting, the black and white shorts that comprise “7 Fragments” are set in Kentridge’s Johannesburg studio and take the artist’s own process as their subject. Using cinematic techniques including stop-motion cuts, multiple exposures, superimposition, accelerated and reversed footage, Kentridge explores the construction of perception.
The exhibition at Hartnett Gallery is part of a series of events in honor of William Kentridge, the 2013 Distinguished Visitor in the Humanities at the University of Rochester. All events are open to the UR and Rochester community.
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William Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums and galleries around the world since the 1990s, including Documenta in Kassel, Germany (1997, 2003, 2012), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1998, 2010), the Albertina Museum in Vienna (2010), Jeu de Paume in Paris (2010). Kentridge’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute was presented at Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Festival d’Aix, and in 2011 at La Scala in Milan. He directed Shostakovich’s The Nose for the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2010 (the production traveled to Festival d’Aix and to Lyon in 2011), to coincide with a major exhibition at MoMA.
Kentridge received the prestigious Kyoto Prize in 2010, in recognition of his contributions in the field of arts and philosophy. In 2011, Kentridge was elected as an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received the degree of Doctor of Literature honoris causa from the University of London. In 2011 he presented the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University; was elected member of the American Philosophical Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was awarded the Dan David Prize by Tel Aviv University, and was named as Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. In 2013, William Kentridge was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts by Yale University.
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April 11 – May 12, 2013
Sweet Tea and Pecan Pie:
The Annual SPRING Undergraduate Juried Exhibition
Opening Reception in the Gallery: Thursday, April 11th, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
The Hartnett Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition “Sweet Tea and Pecan Pie: The Annual SPRING Undergraduate Juried Exhibition,” featuring work by current undergraduate students from all departments across the University of Rochester. The title refers to our dreaming of and celebrating the coming of spring.
The exhibition will open on Thursday, April 11th and a reception will take place in the gallery from 5:00 to 7:00pm that evening. This exhibit represents a survey of the diversity of artistic practices that students engage with at the University of Rochester. From photography and video to painting and sculpture, all varieties of artistic media will be included in the exhibition. Hartnett Gallery hosts this exhibition each year in effort to support artistic creation on campus.
Purchases prizes and awards for artwork will be announced during the opening reception.
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The guest juror for the exhibition is the artist Romy Hosford. Hosford is a multimedia artist and Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Roberts Wesleyan College. She holds an MFA degree in Visual Studies from Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, in conjunction with The College at Brockport, SUNY, and a BFA and MS in Art Education from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, where she concentrated in ceramics and fiber arts. Her photo/video based installation work can be described as storytelling through object, material, and historical contexts; often dealing with perception, definition, and expectation. For more information, visit romyhosford.com.
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February 21-March 31 (closed March 9-16 for Spring Break)
Being Here
A Site-Specific Installation by Janice Jakielski
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, February 21, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Gowen Room, Wilson Commons, River Campus
Opening Reception in the Gallery: Thursday, February 21, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Hartnett Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition entitled Being Here by Janice Jakielski. Using ceramics, fabric, and paper, Jakielski creates headdresses and wearable appendages that allude to Victorian-era hats and to technological devices that facilitate communication. Jakielski displays these works in colorful, immersive environments, and for the Hartnett Gallery she will be transforming the space into a multi-color display room reminiscent of a millinery shop.
Jakielski’s recent practice of full-scale, mixed media costuming involves both transforming the human body and altering human perception. Recreating objects such as binoculars, glasses, and primitive telephones in fabric and clay, Jakielski turns these communication and comprehension aids into decorative accessories that straddle the line between the practical and the ornamental. In a series of headdresses, Jakielski employs one of the most esoteric and ornate language forms from a bygone era: floriography. This Victorian means of communication through the giving and receiving of specific flowers comes across in life-like paper flowers that Jakielski uses to adorn handmade hats and to send secret messages.
Janice Jakielski will be at the University of Rochester on Thursday, February 21 at 4:00 p.m. to give a talk about her work in the Gowen Room in Wilson Commons at the University of Rochester. An opening reception for Being Here will take place in the gallery from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., following the artist’s talk. All events are free and open to the public.
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Janice Jakielski was born in Maytown, Pennsylvania and currently lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she is a visiting artist and instructor at the Alberta College of Art and Design. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the New York State College of Ceramic Art and Design at Alfred University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Jakielski has been an artist-in-resident at the Roswell Artist in Residence Program in Roswell, NM; the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, NY; the Archie Bray Foundations for the Arts in Helena, MT; and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in Woodside, CA. Her work has been shown at the Seattle Design Center, Seattle, WA; The Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY; Pendleton Center for the Arts, Pendleton, OR; Greenwich House Pottery, New York, NY; Vertigo Artspace, Denver, CO; and the Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA.
For more information about Janice Jakielski, visit janicejakielski.com.
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January 24 – February 17, 2013
Watching: U.S. and Japan
Drawings by Christopher Troutman
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, January 24th, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Gowen Room, Wilson Commons, River Campus
Opening Reception in the Gallery: Thursday, January 24th, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Hartnett Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition entitled Watching: U.S. and Japan by Illinois- and Japan-based artist Christopher Troutman. Consisting of a series of large-scale charcoal, gesso, and ink drawings, Watching: U.S. and Japan places scenes from the U.S. and Japan side by side and asks viewers to examine the visual terrain of urban spaces in both countries.
In his recent series of large-scale drawings, Troutman depicts the human figure in contemporary urban settings from dynamic points of view, the subjects of which are from his observations while living in the United States and Japan each year. By intensifying aspects of remembered visual experiences through composition and mark making, he posits everyday life as a valuable topic for exploration in drawing.
Christopher Troutman will be at the University of Rochester on Thursday, January 24 at 4:00 p.m. to give a talk about his work in the Gowen Room in Wilson Commons at the University of Rochester. An opening reception for Watching: U.S. and Japan will take place in the gallery from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., following the artist’s talk. All events are free and open to the public.
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Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Peoria, Illinois, Christopher Troutman graduated from Bradley University in 2003 then moved to Japan, where he and his wife opened a conversational English School in Kagoshima City. While living in southern Japan, in 2005 he was the first foreign resident to be awarded the Grand Prize at the 52nd Kagoshima Prefectural Art Exhibition. In 2008, Christopher completed a MFA in drawing and painting at California State University, Long Beach, after which he taught at Eastern Kentucky University and Vincennes University, and since 2010 he has taught at Eastern Illinois University. Christopher Troutman has had solo exhibitions at the galleries of Bradley University, Tennessee Technical University, and the Cedarhurst Art Center, as well as other venues in the U.S. and southern Japan.
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November 15th – December 9th, 2012
Downstairs and To The Left
A group exhibition of Department of Art and Art History faculty and staff
Reception: Thursday, November 29th – 6:00-8:00pm – in the Hartnett Gallery
Participatory Event: Thursday, November 29th – 8:00pm (immediately following the reception) – meet in the Hartnett Gallery
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The Hartnett Gallery is pleased to announce its semi-annual faculty exhibition featuring the works of sixteen artists working in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Rochester: John K. Archer, Stephanie Ashenfelder & Amos Scully, Derek Crowe, Cary Peppermint + Leila Nadir | ecoarttech, Rachael Hetzel, Alysia Kaplan, Heather Layton, Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge, Michael Leonard, Amy McLaren, Colette Quaglia, Allen Topolski, Robert Wolfe, and Bill Wolff.
Titled “Downstairs and To the Left,” the exhibition showcases an extensive selection of media – painting, photography, sculpture, installations, and a participatory event. This group exhibition also offers a unique opportunity to engage the variety of artistic viewpoints possessed by our faculty and staff members in a collective conversation.
Tying the work together is the Sage Art Center, home to the studio program, and located on the north end of River Campus between Anderson and Wilder residential halls. While the students’ studios, photo and computer labs, woodshop, and metal shop occupy the upper levels of Sage, the lower level houses storage areas, lockers, and the faculty studios. With plenty of foot traffic being directed downstairs (to visit studios and office hours, use the bathrooms, deliver goods to the loading dock and find replacement staples), the title of the show, “Downstairs and to the Left,” is an accurate summation of current – internal and external – affairs.
A reception will take place on Thursday, November 29th from 6:00 – 8:00pm in the gallery. A participatory performance using ecoarttech’s app Indeterminate Hikes+ led by Leila Nadir + Cary Peppermint | ecoarttech will immediately follow the reception at 8:00pm.
The exhibition will be free and open to the public as of Thursday, November 15th.
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October 12th – November 4th, 2012
Robin Germany
Watermark
Photographs
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, October 18th, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Hartnett Art Gallery, Wilson Commons, River Campus
Opening Reception in the Gallery: Friday, October 12th, 5:00-7:00 p.m. (Part of the Meliora Weekend Events)
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Robin Germany’s photographs explore the fragile line between the human and the natural world. Slipping her camera just below the surface of natural bodies of water, her works reveal the bustling environments that exist beyond the placid facade. Whether minute creatures too small to be seen by the naked eye, or detritus from our own lives, Germany captures the often-ignored inhabitants and intricacies of this parallel world.
For her show at the Hartnett Gallery, Germany presents a group of large-format photographs that elevate what is below the water’s surface. Employing a unique technique, Germany’s photographs are formatted to disclose what lies on either side of that frontier. Most importantly, she crosses the fragile boundary between what is above and what is below to reveal the intimate connection between our world and a more liquid one.
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Robin Germany is Associate Professor of Photography at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work including a Polaroid Artist’s Award and a regional NEA grant. Her work is included in many collections, such as the Center for Creative Photography, Polaroid, The Boise Art Museum, Texas Tech University Museum of Art and numerous private collections. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas (1985).
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September 6th – September 30th, 2012
Alessandra Sulpy
To Toy With the Attic
Paintings
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, September 6th, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Stackel Room, Wilson Commons, River Campus (Please not the change of room for the artist talk)
Opening Reception in the Gallery: Thursday, September 6th, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
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Alessandra Sulpy’s figural paintings reveal uncanny worlds where dynamic human bodies and equally dynamic kitschy objects interact; sometimes humorously and sometimes horrifically. For her show at the Hartnett, Sulpy has selected a group of paintings that explore the strange relationship between human beings and the objects that populate their worlds. With knick-knacks and toys serving as the protagonists in her works, Sulpy’s paintings reverse typical roles. The toy characters she creates are the cleverest citizens, endowed with a soul and ownership of their space. As a result, the human beings she represents become akin to ephemera or decoration. Shifting the plane of existence for these humans and objects, Sulpy’s work allows us to reflect on that which may or may not exist at the periphery of our own dwellings.
Alessandra Sulpy will be at the University of Rochester on Thursday, September 6th at 4:00pm to give a talk about her work in the Gowen Room in Wilson Commons at the University of Rochester. An opening reception for “To Toy With the Attic” will take place in the gallery from 5:00-7:00 p.m., following the artist’s talk. All events are free and open to the public.
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Alessandra Sulpy received her Master of Fine Arts from Indiana University in 2010, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, and has been featured in the magazine “Canvas.”