Julie Oppermann

For more info visit my website

I am an MFA Graduate Student at Hunter College, studying painting, class of 2012. When I'm not in the studio, I'm working as a laboratory manager for Paul Nurse at Rockefeller University.

My paintings explore the visual experience of seeing. I borrow ideas from optical art, but translate them into my own language, making them lyrical, gestural, full of imperfection, handmade and personal. I want my paintings to express motion, movement and energy. The choice of bold colors and patterns catches the attention of the viewer from afar, and the large-scale format surrounds the viewer up-close, creating a mesmerizing and meditative experience.

In my current body of work, I am exploring moire patterns, the optical effect that occurs when two similar but non-identical line patterns are overlapped, causing a third pattern to appear. I have been working with watercolor, acrylic and flashe paint on paper, but recently have begun a series of acrylic paintings directly on canvas. The shift to canvas from paper has allowed me to experiment with colored grounds, putting more of an emphasis on color interactions, and drawing on my studies in color theory. Additionally, the less-absorbent surface allows a new kind of mark making that I quite enjoy. By layering washes of paint I can achieve complex, rich regions of color - and by adding different mediums, I create a range of different textures as well.

Prior to entering Hunter’s MFA program, I completed a Master’s in Neuroscience at The University of California, Berkeley. While I don’t consciously draw from my scientific background when making my work, the processes of critical thinking, creative problem solving and experimentation that I practice in the laboratory also augment my artistic process. In a way, I do take a scientific approach with my work, and one could interpret my moire paintings as a visual exploration of an optical phenomenon. I am fascinated by visual perception; how the eye perceives colors and shapes, and how the brain interprets them. In the end, however, it is the painting itself, rather than the science, than motivates me to create.

Travis Wyche

Travis Wyche is a Chicago-based artist and experimental musician utilizing a variety of media to fashion a practice infusing institutional critique with phenomenological disorientation and a self-reflexive pedagogy. His practice has most recently taken the form of intricate collage works, sound installations, conceptual sculptures, typewritten concrete poems, and hand painted 35mm slides for multiple amplified Kodak Ektagraphic projectors. He received a BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and is currently attending the MFA program at the School of the Art Institute Chicago.

Statement

I am formally trained as a painter, I willingly adopt the title of “painter,” and I am interested in parlaying with the discourses besieging the status of contemporary painting. However, my raison d’être lies within the obsession for meaning cascading throughout all of academia, and indeed also observable in numerous primitive, esoteric, mystical, or otherwise delegitimized constellations of study. I seldom make “paintings” in the sense of applying oil or acrylic-suspended pigments to canvas or panel with brushes or palette knife, preferring instead to explore my ideas with derelict material approaches. Mattresses left to rot in stank allies, obsolete audio-visual equipment, and the heavily oxidized acid-laden pages of ageing text books have always seemed fitting signifiers for a society of lavish novelty and imprudent waste. I assemble this domestic and institutional detritus into objects and experiences evoking suppressed mythologies, the depersonalizing scrutiny of science, and the spiritual ecstasy of transcendence, utilizing whatever medium and psychology of mind best suits the focus of the particular project I’m focusing on. By cross-correlating theoretical philosophies of mind, hypotheses of cognitive science, and psychological perspectives from the art historical cannon with the eye-level perspective of anatomical, botanical, and geological images – or any other image that could be seen to arouse associations of epiphenomena in the universe or meta-states of the subject – I attempt to collate and compare my flickering signifiers as being equally problematic in their permeation of meaning and potent in their poetic potential to describe the current state of the subjective ego in the oscillating universe. I try to stay limber with my theories, to maintain and transmit a universal skepticism (rather than antagonism) that I find so intrinsic to my being of and in this world, while also sustaining a neutrality (not to be confused with indifference) towards the ethical and political associations of my works. A formally nuanced methodology constructs the framework to impart my oscillatory theoretical modus operandi, and so I keep as much expressive gesture and ornamental mark-making out of the work as possible. I intend my work to be difficult, to manipulate expectations and extend alternative mechanisms of understanding, but hopefully the viewer will also derive some pleasure from the aesthetic absurdity of the unorthodox juxtapositions as they were certainly most enjoyable to discover and assemble.

For more please visit www.TravisWyche.com

 Singular Divination Amidst Tripartite Apothecarian Counsel

Book-Clippings and Ink on Found Paper

6"x9"

Compost

Book-Clippings on Found Paper

6"x9"

Untitled [A Singular Orchestra]

Book-Clippings on Book Page

~3"x5"

The Big Bounce

Waxed Leather, Raw Wool, Laytex

Variable Dimensions

Event-Score

Magnetized Tape and Tape Recorder

Variable Dimensions

Matt Tackett

Untitled, 2010, acrylic and ink on canvas, 34x46 inches

Dog Dream, 2009, mixed media on holographic paper

More images + CV at www.matttackett.com

Mike Welsh

I Was Born on a Saturday Night 2010 mixed medium sculpture 60 x 75 x 27 inches

Hang In There Baby #3 2010 graphite, ink and acrylic on paper 30 x 40 inches (eyes glow in the dark)

Untitled 2010 unique screen print, wax, glass, and ink on framed paper 9 1/2 x 12 each

Michael Welsh is an artist living and working in Portland Oregon

My work explores the world that we humans have created for ourselves, most specifically a world ripe with global warming, war, and an international recession. This most recent body of work addresses specifically the artificial and unstable nature of the factions of society who, faced with such insurmountable odds, have chosen to drop out. In many cases the lifespan of these groups is short and they are seldom able to enact lasting real change on the mainstream society they are claiming to reject. My work reflects the wasted energy, loss of innocence and personal experiences of these individuals.

In the case of my work, vibrant depictions of the leftovers of a culture dominated by hopelessness reflect the human waste, dark humor, and rampant sexual malaise of contemporary society. Paintings and sculptural objects experience this world in the way that the human body would, and therefore act as a stand in for the dire circumstances and eventual failure of this world to change its outcome.

The color spectrum that I am interested in using is selected for its artificiality and industrial quality. Spray paint, day glow and fluorescence are used to reflect a buildup and expenditure of energy through personal experience. Simultaneously, surface is used to denote physical action on behalf of this unseen population and the passage of time. Art objects and images are embedded with individual and collective experiences as a way to address real and personal questions.