BROWN RISD HILLEL GALLERY PROJECT

Hannah Antalek / RISD 2013, Co-chair

Methamphetamine acrylic, tin foil and rock candy

Though first appearing as rock candy the content of this piece is actually comprised of abstracted crystal meth. By creating this unsettling juxtaposition I wanted to draw attention to the overpowering visual stimulation that reflects the neurological stimulation and subsequent simulation of reality experienced while under the drug’s influence.

I am a current sophomore in painting at RISD. My work has been displayed in many solo exhibitions and group shows in Rhode Island and New York including a solo exhibition at Feast Gallery and a solo exhibit at Uncommon Grounds both in Saratoga Springs NY. I was the recipient of the Curators Choice and Honorable Mention Award at the Hyde Museum in Glens Falls NY. Most recently I was selected for a studio visit by the curator of P.S.1 MoMA Tim Goossens who chose two of my pieces to be displayed at RISD Expose.

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Lauren Armstrong / Brown 2013

Selected for Exhibition by Rachel Kay

Venice Canal at Night oil

Motion In Time Map oil

Venice Canal At Night presents the viewer with an interpretation of Venice, Italy unlike those we have seen on postcards or in travel magazines. No gondolas, no fisherman, no street markets or tourists. Instead, an ominous sky hangs over black water. A few lights give the scene enough information to see the deserted space. Is this somber portrayal enough to change our perception of the bustling Italian city? Such iconic waterways and architecture suddenly absorb a new history that throws off the viewer upon first look.

Motion in Time Map is an attempt to transform the intangible change in our visual perception over time into a mapped-visual system. An ambiguous and mysterious male figure stares blankly ahead from the center of the canvas. The moments that have just passed are fading into orange while future moments are swirling ahead in a textured cloud of almost-text. Future is always ambiguous, but is the past always left in the past? Our sensation of present time is pervaded with our pasts, our histories.

I grew up in Seattle, WA and have been painting in various media for the past five years. In the spring of 2008 I enrolled in a semester at Studio Art Center International in Florence, Italy where I first developed an interest in oil painting which I still continue to explore as a sophomore at Brown.

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Ryan Bush / RISD 2013

Selected for Exhibition by Julien Ngyuen

Kitchen Routine plaster, photo

Right, left, right, left, right, left, right

Born Denver, Colorado.

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Cynthia Chang / RISD 2013

Selected for Exhibition by Julien Ngyuen

Hand Made, Ready Made wool, yarn

I want for each piece I create to have a life outside of who I am, uninformed by what I have to say about the work, and instead informed by what the audience chooses to interpret. So rather than force an audience to try to understand my work by encumbering the piece with language, I will abstain from saying anything except to say that I decline.

I have my own initials tattooed on my butt.

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Max Levi Frieder / RISD 2012

Selected for Exhibition by Hannah Antalek

My Last Illegal Kol Needre oil on box top

She Looked Like it Was Time to be Used oil on snow shovel

The Cubacratic Hitch-Hikers oil on couch cushion

People are sexual, but sex is human.

People have faces everywhere.

People are human everywhere.

I am a Jewish painter living in a privileged world of auto-didacity.

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Christina Graham / RISD 2011

Committee Member

Column Simulation contact paper

SketchUp Attempt #1 graphite on paper

I have just started to experiment with new media including Google SketchUp, Max/MSP, Arduino and web based art. I am interested in the relationship between virtual and physical. My intent is to use digital media as a tool or medium to create content that starts to talk about offline social structures.

Christina Graham is from Brooklyn, NY. She is currently a painting major at RISD. She plans to graduate in June and start a major in Realness with a concentration in Bartending.

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Yung Hui / RISD 2013

Selected for Exhibition by Hannah Antalek and Benjamin Kicic

Dimensions Study #1 digital

Dimensions Study #2 digital

Dimensions oil

There is a correlation between the way in which we psychologically perceive the human body and how we approach the aesthetics of design. Much in the same way experience the human figure within a painting, we react similarly to various aspects of simple geometry, shape, colour, line and perspective- to such a degree that these originally distinct entities become indistinguishable from one another. In Dimensions, I have attempted to compare this phenomenon by margining concepts of figurative art, architecture, and abstraction through the use of traditional and digital mediums.

Yung Hui was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Canada at a very young age. Throughout his life, Yung has been influenced by various experiences that have helped shape the nature of his work. From the experience of living in a multicultural environment to being engulfed by Westernized, pop-cultural entertainment, Yung employs a certain level of re-appropriation as a platform for addressing larger questions. Yung is currently a sophomore in illustration at RISD.

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Benjamin Kicic / RISD 2013

Committee Member

A Test mixed media

How To Train Your Woman mixed media

Doing What I Do Best mixed media

Independent Hunny Make $$ All Day mixed media

No Escape When I Shake It In Ya Face mixed media

Party Status mixed media

This body of work is about exploring how people, my “facebook friends”, present themselves online. These works are an exploration of the idea that voyeurism and exhibitionism due to social networking sites is now uniform in our society. This body of work aims at asking why, through juxtaposition of body parts taken out of context and rearranged. Why are all these risqué photos of people we know and see daily so readily available online? Why is this way of presenting ourselves so widespread? Is facebook a true representation of how society actually is and how we choose to identify ourselves?

These pieces also explore our current ideal of beauty. By cropping out the most attractive elements of one woman and putting it on another, is it still attractive? These works challenge our notion of what is commonplace online as we find ourselves attracted to these women but at the same time repelled by their crudeness and openness, not only in subject matter but also through their distortion.

Born in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, Benjamin Kicic is a student at RISD, working on his BA in furniture design. His work has been shown in several Rhode Island galleries including AS220 and the Hillel Gallery. More of his work can be seen at www.benjaminkicic.com

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Emily Martin / Brown 2011

Selected for Exhibition by Rachel Kay and Jen Jungmin Lee

Convergence V video

Convergence V questions the aesthetics of the letterform and the boundary between the meaning of text and its pure shape. Bodies and textiles in motion distort the recognizable form of the ‘text object’ while the projection itself obscures the moving figures. As the projected text flashes, the expectation of narrative is fractured while the bodies’ physical motion is continuous.

Emily Martin grew up in Brooklyn, New York and is now a senior at Brown concentrating in Visual and Literary Arts.

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Jina Park / Brown 2011

Selected for Exhibition by Marisol Im

(Pre)vision oil

People say that eyes are doorways to the soul. Each person’s iris is unique like a fingerprint. The tissue and cells of the iris look like a nebula in space, and when one stares at another’s iris, it is almost as if one is staring into that persons unique universe.

I researched and combined different shapes of irises into the painting because I wanted to show how different individual irises could be. I also incorporated the elements of light points that look like stars from afar to emphasize how an iris looks like an object in space. The result is a big eye that resembles an obscure planet/object in space, peeking into the viewer’s own eye’s/ universe.

Born in Daegu, South Korea in 1988, Jina Park is a senior at Brown University with a double concentration in Visual Arts and Economics. Growing up in the dynamic city of Seoul in South Korea, she mainly focuses on drawing with pencil. After spending 8 months in Paris during spring/summer of 2011 and graduating from Brown University the artist plans to study fashion design and eventually work in the fashion industry. Currently, the artist likes to work with oil paint as well as photoshop and pencil. Also a dancer and a person with diverse interests including producing pieces of electronic music as well as video clips, the artist gets her inspiration from everyday material surrounding her, including in this case, the eye.

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Julien Nguyen / RISD 2013

Committee Member

St. Sebastian oil

“I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.” – Gustave Courbet

b. 1990

BFA Painting 2013

Concentration in Art History

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Julia Shube / Brown 2014

Committee Member

Saguaro on the Green pastel collage

Saguaro on the Green is a pastel collage that experiments with the Arizona desert and the life that grows there. It particularly focuses on the cactus and uses the construction of the cactus as the basis for the triangular, paper cut construction of the work. The added level of paper brings texture to the work in a way that simulates desert vegetation. The piece can be appreciated both visually and tactilely, expanding upon the tradition of pastel works on paper.

Julia Shube is a freshman at Brown University. She plans to concentrate in cognitive science and/or education. Julia enjoys working in acrylics and pastels and dabbling in glass blowing.

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Jill Rose Silverberg / Brown 2011

Selected for Exhibition by Marisol Im

Disembodied 1 acrylic monotype collage on oil monotype

Disembodied 2 acrylic monotype collage on oil monotype

Disembodied 3 acrylic monotype collage on oil monotype

The Disembodied Series is about materiality – how thin and light materials such as rice paper and thread can be manipulated to convey such weight and heaviness. The shapes evoke landmasses or artifacts of another time, precious clues to another realm of existence.

I am from Seattle, WA. I am currently a senior at Brown University, concentrating in both Visual Arts and the History of Art and Architecture. My work is primarily monotype collages and oil paintings.

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Timothy Simonds / Brown 2011

Selected for Exhibition by Rachel Kay

Untitled 1 tar and wood

Untitled 2 tar, canvas and wood

I am a concentrator in the Performance Studies and Architectural Studies departments at Brown University. My academic and creative work explores the spatial attributes of self, body, and its place. Through sculpture and performance I question issues of wallness and liminality as they are applied to our bodies and the places we condition.

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Judy Yoon / RISD 2012

Selected for Exhibition by Marisol Im

Tracks poplar and maple

Make honest, simple design.

Industrial design junior at RISD. From Duluth, Georgia. Likes to collect gelato spoons.

Under the theme of “S(t)imulation” that I propose, I invite you all to take on the active position of the modern flâneur, immersing oneself in the stimulating environment of simulated realities at the Hillel Gallery’s annual fall committee curated show. Whether it be the 21^st century phenomenon of online social networking or the exploding colors that interact with one another on canvas, the social character of art has never been such a pertinent topic of discussion in today’s landscape of ubiquitous art and technology. Composed of the work of committee members and of their selected artist-students, the exhibit engages the observer not only in its physically alluring space, but also in the collective pool of contemplation on the questions of contemporaneity as points of connection. The only gallery that bridges the Brown and RISD art communities, the Gallery Project is proud to present to you the assemblage of whimsical ideas and visuals to provoke minds and senses of the audience.

Jen Jungmin Lee, Brown ’11, Co- Chair

Jungmin Lee is a media/ visual culture theorist from Brown University, double-concentrating in Modern Culture and Media (Track II: Production) and French Civilization. Born in Seoul, Korea, she has been mobile since an early age and encountering different culture around the globe. In addition to pursuing secondary and higher education in Boston and Providence, U.S.A., she has just spent seven months of studying and working in Paris, France. Having adopted a new perspective in arts, Jungmin takes a pause in her artistic production and reflects on the efficacy and the affect of the image production, while focusing on the theories in cultural studies, specifically on exhibition and the public. She is fascinated particularly by the role of exhibition, its form along with its content that heightens the (un)pleasure of the viewing experience of the spectator. Academically trained as a film studies scholar, Jungmin probes in a critical manner the convergence of art, the moving image, and exhibition. In her artistic practices, she enjoys the delicate medium of graphite on paper, while appreciating the incomparable richness of oil paint on wood panel, and simultaneously intrigued by conceptually driven video art or stop motion animation.