VISUAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES

Transitions and Translations

A Visual Critical Studies Symposium

Exhibition

curated by Joe Iverson

Concertina Gallery

2351 N. Milwaukee Avenue, 2nd floor

Chicago, IL 60647

April 24 - May 3, 2010

Opening Reception: Saturday April 24, 7pm-10pm

Gallery hours Sundays noon - 5pm, and by appointment, concertinagallery@gmail.com

Transitions and Translations brings together visual representations of written thesis work by seven graduate students from the Visual Critical Studies department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While each pursue disparate topics in their individual research, all hunt for solutions in how to visually represent abstract theoretical concepts and arguments as a way of clarifying their meaning. What their visual work brings to the fore is the subtle importance all those many little things, the details of our culture, that form the groundwork of a collective visual experience. These seven artist-scholars use their interdisciplinary methods as means to understand and critique and inevitable shifting transitions and translations of the multivalent contemporary visual culture.

Amanda Brinkman builds a shrine with items and ephemera that document a site of performance, as a way of critically positioning tourism as a modern pilgrimage. Maureen A. Burns uses the Concertina stairwell to consider the difficulty of nomadic practices to form. Joel Kuennen explores Western subjectivity in spatial representation with a video installation that considers first person narrative. Jorge Mujica, playing with the combination of materials, found objects, and light, experiments with formal ideas of color and space as perceptive functions. Susan Morelock’s photographs, selections from a larger series, question the influence of photographic technological advancements on visual perception. Benjamin Pearson uses video documentation as a form of considering cultural narrative. Brian Wallace explores the function of text as a visual linguistic structure in contrast to photographic elements in both wall text and in printed form.

 

Symposium

Art Institute of Chicago

Modern Wing, Studio A

 

Thursday, May 6, 2:00-7:00pm

 

2:00-2:10 Welcome -- Jim Elkins

 

Panel 1 – Moderated by Patrick Rivers

 

2:10-2:30 Maureen Burns, “The Conflicting Desires of Mobility”

 

2:30-2:50 Amanda Brinkman, “Imaginary Landscapes:  Fan Tourism and the Rural Imaginary”

 

2:50-3:10 Susan Morelock, “A Tendency Toward Turning and Pertinence to Perception:

Looking at Photographs in the Twenty-first Century”

 

3:10-3:30 Brian Wallace, “The Woods”

 

3:30-4:00 Discussion

 

4:00-4:20 Break

 

4:20-4:30 Canon journal introduction

 

Panel 2 – Moderated by Maud Lavin

 

4:30-4:50 Joel Kuennen, “I in Space:  Encountering the Self through Representation”

 

4:50-5:10 Benjamin Pearson, “Appropriating Histories:  Holocaust Re-visualizations in a Digital Archive”

 

5:10-5:30 Jorge Mujica, “An Experiment in Critical Art Practice:  The Process of Making Art Informed by Donald Judd and Jessica Stockholder”

 

5:30-6:00 Discussion

 

6:00-6:10 Toast – Maud Lavin

 

6:10-7:00 Reception in the AIC Trading Room (use Columbus Dr. entrance)

 

Canon, volume 3, a publication of visual culture, will be available at the symposium; with contributions from Sara Clugage, Christine Elliott, Brandon T. Evans, Meredith Kooi, Jessica Neyt, Lauren Ross, Jeremy Shedd, and Dustin Yager.