MFA Sculpture Thesis (2020-2021)

MFA Sculpture Thesis Show (2020-2021)

March 3 – 12, 2021

Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery

Sculpture offers a direct, embodied experience of reality through encounter with material presence within physical space. The artists in this exhibition consider sculpture as a means of cultural production that shares material, process, language, and history with our social and physical environment. In other words, their creative work extends beyond its formal characteristics, pointing to the varied and complex areas of specialized labor that are embedded within every aspect of our daily life – from architecture and physical infrastructure to the production of consumer goods and the myriad collocations of text and image that flood forth from our illuminated screens. These artists make work that is both entangled with the conditions of reality while seeking to fundamentally reconsider much of what we overlook, take for granted, or ignore.

Over the course of their years within this program, these five artists have worked to push against the boundaries of their field, and as a result have transformed and amplified their individual creative voices. They found agency within their own artistic practices during this unpredictable time of crisis, both in the context of a global pandemic and our exigent and ongoing national reckoning with history. The resulting work is an offer of realness, an encounter with the familiar through the prism of transformation, an invocation of the hope that our connection to the world and to each other will strengthen and endure.