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Aug 8 - Sept 10, 2009 |
This exhibition displays the work of five emerging Valley area artists. Their work ranges from fine art paintings to pop surrealist illustrations. The title of the exhibition is derived from the fact that four of these artists have received a Master of Arts degree, while the fifth is just entering the program. The irony about a Master of Arts is that it isn’t a terminal degree, it doesn’t allow for employment in a four year institution. So it leaves the artist in a kind of limbo, unable to teach and without that final stamp of approval that the art world covets.
Therese Conte’s work focuses on the inner world of teens, revealed through and influenced by technology and the media. Her images are allegorical, paralleling the broader themes relating to the teen experience in today’s society. Conte is interested in how teens negotiate their way through the very disturbing and emotionally toxic world in which they live.
Hector Enriquez’s work exhibits romantic and sexual stereotypes that are perpetuated in our media (i.e. film, literature, music). Enriquez utilizes these sexual and romantic stereotypes to explore issues dealing with love, procreation, technology, nature, and faith. Movies and literature have a huge impact on his illustrations. Thus his work is presented in a rectangular widescreen format.
Ray Hwang’s images are based on dreams. Within each painting, the recurring image is an adventurous mechanical bird, which represents the soft image of a female, the hard shell image of male, and is a manifestation of Ray herself. She incorporates different features of nature in her artwork. However, her hope is that the viewer, utilizing, the mechanical bird as a focal point, will begin their own personal adventure of the within the illustrations.
Mike McGowan’s work focuses on suburban sprawl as a pervasive and expanding problem. Juxtaposing rendered elements from the natural landscape with the flat artificiality of suburbia, he creates scenes that reflect its monotony, density, and sterility. Through deliberate repetition of shapes and color he presents suburbia as a construct that stifles individuality and fosters depression, homogenization, and pacification. Also, by drawing on the current mortgage crisis he seeks to capture the slow decay of the suburban phenomenon and what is, for many, the American dream.
Megan Rothman’s Illustrations create a world where dualities are the narrative emphasis, a tableau of childlike imagery both of innocence and corruption set in an adult context. She captures a child’s acquisition of new images, emotions, and reactions to nature’s often strange and unique objects. Her paintings bring to life the whimsical, the youthful, and caution us not to lose the perceptions we once possessed as children. Elements of psychology, undertones of feminism, and the fusion of pop culture intertwine themselves into the tone of her illustrations and play as counterparts to the imagery.
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