Joel Seah, "Like Moths To A Flame 2," mixed media (2008). Seah, one of the five exhibiting artists, will present a public slide lecture Feb. 3 at 5 p.m. in Huber Auditorium in Badgely Hall.
Cory Peeke | Director, Nightingale Gallery
541-962-3584 | cpeeke@eou.edu
1 February 2010
LA GRANDE, Ore. - The Nightingale Gallery of Eastern Oregon University presents "Creation of Identity," a group exhibition featuring a collection of works that explore many facets of human self-awareness and identity. The exhibit presents the work of five artists from throughout the United States working in a variety of media.
The exhibition opens Friday, Feb. 5 with a reception from 6-8 p.m. in the gallery located in Loso Hall. The show will run through Friday, Feb. 26. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
"Creation of Identity" will present a selection of works by artists Benjamin Duke, Kim Fink, Christina Marsh, Io Palmer and Joel Seah. These five artists each explore the construction of personal identity through their visual works.
Benjamin Duke's dynamic large-scale paintings ask viewers to question, "Is this the way the world is?" His allusion filled images comment on his own place in the world and world's place within him as an individual and an artist. He calls this approach "looking out to see in."
Duke was born in Louisville, Ky. and grew up in Utah. He studied literature, philosophy and art at the University of Utah receiving his bachelor of fine arts in 2002. He received his master of fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and has been teaching painting and drawing at Michigan State University since 2006. He is represented by the Ann Nathan Gallery of Chicago.
Kim Fink is interested in the exploration of comparative culture and what is termed "cultural" or "group memory," implicit as well as explicit - all of which define qualities that form us as individuals.
Fink's mixed media works combine images drawn from contemporary mass media contrasted with hand-executed drawing. His work is an attempt to create a fusion of cultural realities that explore objective verses subjective visions and develop a synthesis between image and meaning.
Fink received his bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and in 1979, he graduated from Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. and Rome, Italy with a master of fine arts in printmaking. Currently, he is an associate professor art and printmaking at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. He has exhibited and lectured in a variety of national and international venues.
Christina Marsh uses art as a medium to illustrate her struggle with physical and emotional bonds. Between the polarities of black and white, positive and negative exists a neutral area. Her works are about deciphering that gray area. Pulling from the aesthetic and history of Rorschach prints, She has pursued a series called 'Splotches.' Her method of creating this series was to literally take ink and render half an object that she associated with blackness. She then took this half of a drawing and folded it making the initial side touch the other to create a whole. The process of taking a half and creating a whole that is distorted in translation becomes a way to illustrate her personal interpretation of black stereotypes.
Marsh received her bachelor of fine arts from Memphis College of Art and a master of fine arts with an emphasis in photography from the University of Illinois at Urbana. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions as well as taught at the Maryland Institute of Art and Colorado College since her graduation in 2005.
Through depictions of cleaning products, laborers' garments, and various other industrial and domestic forms, Io Palmer's artworks explore complex issues of class, race, and identity, in particular the impact of society on the individual. Trained originally as a ceramicist, Palmer uses a variety of processes and materials including metal, linen and sound to depict the tensions between the domains of the imagination and the public performances of identity.
Palmer holds a bachelor of fine arts from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and a master of fine arts from the University of Arizona. She is currently an assistant professor at Washington State University. Palmer's work has been featured in several national and international exhibitions, including Working History at Reed College, Hair Follies at Concordia University in Montreal and most recently an exhibition at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University.
Joel Seah's mixed media works investigate images as they pertain to the construction of identities in contemporary culture. His primary focus is on exploring the problematic positioning of gay/queer identities in social spaces. His works modify appropriated imagery from master printmakers, historical books and simultaneously combines records of repeating phrases. This is an attempt to understand how past/present/future gay experiences can be framed by creating meaningful multiples.
Formally trained as a printmaker, Seah received his bachelor of fine arts degree from The University of Alabama at Birmingham and his master of fine arts degree from Syracuse University. Until he relocated permanently to Royal Oak, Michigan this year to become the primary healthcare provider for his partner, Seah maintained a tenure-track position in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Southern Maine. Seah started GreenBambooStudios - a graphic design business exploring ventures in commercial visual communication - as a means to support a now independently funded fine arts studio practice.
"This exhibit is intended to encourage viewers to question commonly held assumptions about stereotypes and to explore their own conceptions of self identity," said Cory Peeke, Nightingale Gallery Director and the exhibit's curator. "In addition patrons will also gain insight as to how contemporary artists deal with questions of self-awareness."
"The Nightingale Gallery is pleased to be able to present such a broad array of work investigating issues of identity and to participate in the ongoing discourse concerning the place issues of identity occupy in contemporary art practice," Peeke said.
In conjunction with this exhibit, Seah will present a public slide lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 5 p.m. in Huber Auditorium in Badgely Hall. The presentation is free and open to the public.
For further information about the exhibition call the gallery at 541-962-3667 or visit www.eou.edu/art. To request images of artwork for publication or to schedule an interview with the artists please contact Peeke at cpeeke@eou.edu.
Eastern Oregon University - One University Boulevard - La Grande, OR 97850-2899 - Phone: 541-962-3672
