Artist-run spaces: A conversation

In this conversation on artist-run spaces hosted by the Boston University Alumni Association and the College of Fine Arts, we hear from six artists from around the world. They discuss the history of alternative exhibition spaces, their own practice, and how their experimental and creative approaches in exhibiting artworks redefine the landscape of contemporary art culture.

Moderator:
Won Ju Lim, Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Boston University
Won Ju Lim is a multimedia whose practice examines the interactions of real and imaginary space as they produce fantasy, memory and longing while questioning the peripheral position of a dislocated and self-alienated subject. Lim’s work has been exhibited widely in United States and internationally, including San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Art, Seoul; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; ZKM  Museum fur Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe; Museum Haus Ester, Krefeld; Museum der Moderne, Salzurg; International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, Incheon; Architecture, Art and Landscape Biennial of the Canaries, Fuerteventura; Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju; Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Münster Sculpture Biennale, Münster. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Boston University. 

Panelists:
Marilyn Arsem (CFA’73)
Marilyn Arsem has created more than 200 live events since 1975, ranging from solo performances to large scale, site-specific works incorporating installation and performance.  Based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Arsem has presented work in 30 countries.

Arsem established one of the most extensive programs internationally in visually-based performance art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), where she taught for 27 years. Since leaving SMFA she has been teaching performance workshops internationally.

In 1975 she founded an interdisciplinary collaborative of artists, incorporating in 1980 as Mobius, Inc., a non-profit, tax-exempt, artist-run organization, with the mission to support the creation of new experimental art.  Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 40+ year.

A book on her work,Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem, edited by Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless, has been recently published by Intellect Books of the UK.

Michael Dopp
Michael Dopp (b. 1978, Bloomington, IN) earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005) and attended the New York Studio Program. He received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of California Los Angeles (2009).

He works across various mediums including painting, drawing, ceramics and installation. Additionally, he actively curates, collaborates, co-runs the gallery Arturo Bandini and is a partner of the design store Zakka Bakka.

Dopp resides in Los Angeles where he teaches and mentors at various institutions, including Chapman University and the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts. 

Amy Granat
Amy Granat works predominantly in 16mm film, disarming the documentary association of the medium by addressing the more ephemeral aspects of the photographic process. Her work has been exhibited widely at various galleries and institutions, including MoMA/PS1 (NY), The 2008 Whiteny Biennial (NY), Centre Pompidou (Paris) , Palais de Tokyo (Paris) , White Columns (NY), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Bejing) Kunsthalle Zurich (Zurich), Schirn Kustahalle Frankfurt (Frankfurt), The 2008 Sydney Biennial,  Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw), The Rose Art Museum (Waltham) and CAN – Centre d’Art Neuchatel (Neuchatel). Additionally, in 2015 she co-founded an experimental art gallery with Annina Herzer and has organized over 28 exhibitions. 

Jaro Straub
Since his studies at the University of the Arts Berlin and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna 20 years ago, Jaro Straub has been working as a freelance artist in the fields of fine arts and architecture His main interest in the interdisciplinary connection of these two directions is influenced by a sustained focus on collage, film, performance, sound, and philosophy. Since 2017 he has been the artistic director of the projectspace Scharaun in Berlin-Siemensstadt with exhibitions on art and architecture.

He studied art history and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and in 1995, during the 100th anniversaty of the cinema in Paris, as a film enthusiast, laid the foundation of his interest in experimental film. From 1997 to 2002 he stidued fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Renee Green (1999) and graduated as a master student with Katharina Sieverding at the university of the Arts Berline (2002).

He was the organizer of the series Kunst/Kino with Gregor Stemmrich at the UdK Berlin (1999) and Artist-in-Resident at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Los Angeles from 2002 to 2003. From 2008 to 2011 he was involved in numerous exhibitions of the curatorial collective Komplot from Brussels, including Subdivision Hamburg, Kunsthalle Ystad and Outpost Los Angeles. In 2009 he founded the apartment gallery Gerichtstrasse 52a in Berlin-Wedding and ran the space together with Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez until 2012.

Jaro Staub is the initiator of the exhibition series Verschollene (collages by Hannah Höch) together with Martin G. Schmid at Scharaun (2018), the Shedhalle Zurich (2019), the MEWO Kunsthalle Memmingen (2019/20) and the Kunstverein Pforzheim (2021).

Devin Wilson (CFA’20)
Devin Wilson is a queer, interdisciplinary artist, curator, and writer based in Pittsburgh, PA. They work in photography, video art, sound, sculpture, and performance. Most recently, their work examines the relationship between cosmic space and the queer existence, using ‘the self’ as a way to discover and chart the unknown social and physical terrain.

In April 2020, Devin founded The Bedroom Art Gallery out of their parent’s home in central Pennsylvania. They created the gallery to allow artists to continue to exhibit their work in a physical space and on a digital platform.

Devin received a BFA degree in Sculpture from Boston University in 2020. They received the Marianna Pineda Award from the College of Fine Arts ‘based on their work, work ethic, and intellectual rigor’ in the Sculpture program.