Rhetorical Galleries Presents three installation artists to the phICA Shipping Containers for mid-June to mid-July, 2016. Lauren Strohacker and Kendra Sollis present Animal Land, Eli Richard gives us Butterflies, and Kate Horvat has created Who Knows America? The exhibitions open on Third Friday, June 17, 2016 with a closing reception on First Friday, July 1, 2016. Hours are 6-10pm.
Animal Land:
Animal Land is a visual metaphor for wildlife in the Anthropocene era, an unfolding narrative that wavers between displacement, reintroduction and loss. Collaborators Lauren Strohacker and Kendra Sollars reimagine traditional wildlife encounters in a contemporary format, using projected imagery to induce dialogue about the displacement and loss of native wildlife. Strohacker and Sollars are responding to nature on the verge of collapse due to the politicization and exploitation of land and wildlife management, and investigating a future where genuine interactions between humans and non-human animals may not exist.
For their work with Animal Land, Strohacker and Sollars were awarded a 2014 Contemporary Forum Emerging Artist Grant by the Phoenix Art Museum and a 2015 Artist Research & Development Grant by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Animal Land has been exhibited at the Mesa Arts Center as part of IN FLUX cycle 5, Phoenix Art Museum’s Emerging Artist Exhibition and at the Tucson Art Museum as part of the 2015 Arizona Biennial. Strohacker and Sollars presented Animal Land as part of the prestigious Iris Nights lecture series at the Annenberg Space for Photography in 2016.
Butterflies:
Meet Eli Richard, he's a printmaker, but doesn't exactly make your everyday 2D images. He prints on cut building materials including plywood. These flat spaces are sometimes fixed together (think cut-out paper dolls) and are hanging from the ceiling or creating landscapes laid on the floor against the wall. For this installation he collaborated with Amanda Blake and together their artwork centers around recreating an imagined natural landscape made from manufactured materials and designed imagery.
Who Knows America:
“The Americans, we are convincingly told, are the most materialistic of peoples, and on the other hand, they are the most idealistic, the most revolutionary, and conversely, the most conservative; the most rampantly individualistic and simultaneously, the most gregarious and herd-like; the most irreverent toward their elders, contrariwise, the most abject worshipers of ‘Mom.’ They have an unbridled admiration of everything big, from bulldozers to bosoms; and they are in love with everything diminutive, from the ‘small hotel’ in the song to the ‘little women’ in the kitchen”
– John Kouwenhoven, What’s “American” about America?
Desire and modesty in American culture live in an uneasy and sometimes nonsensical, coexistence. Through campy, kitsch-inspired images stemming from her Midwest background, Horvat explores the desires, expectations, and stereotypes of what it means to be a strong-willed and occasionally arrogant American.
Horvat believes that most of what we think, say, do and experience comes from desire. Consciously or not, these desires are constantly shifting and re-defining our sense of who we are as individuals. We want iPhones, greasy burgers, sexual partners and high-ranking jobs because we ultimately think that these things and experiences are directly linked to happiness.
Horvat deconstructs and rearranges a selection of mundane images inspired by iconic American advertising and imagery and uses these images as a way of exploring how visual culture shapes and reflects our own views and values. Additionally, Horvat is interested in how these projected values influence national identity and our place within it.
Animal Land:
Animal Land is a visual metaphor for wildlife in the Anthropocene era, an unfolding narrative that wavers between displacement, reintroduction and loss. Collaborators Lauren Strohacker and Kendra Sollars reimagine traditional wildlife encounters in a contemporary format, using projected imagery to induce dialogue about the displacement and loss of native wildlife. Strohacker and Sollars are responding to nature on the verge of collapse due to the politicization and exploitation of land and wildlife management, and investigating a future where genuine interactions between humans and non-human animals may not exist.
For their work with Animal Land, Strohacker and Sollars were awarded a 2014 Contemporary Forum Emerging Artist Grant by the Phoenix Art Museum and a 2015 Artist Research & Development Grant by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Animal Land has been exhibited at the Mesa Arts Center as part of IN FLUX cycle 5, Phoenix Art Museum’s Emerging Artist Exhibition and at the Tucson Art Museum as part of the 2015 Arizona Biennial. Strohacker and Sollars presented Animal Land as part of the prestigious Iris Nights lecture series at the Annenberg Space for Photography in 2016.
Butterflies:
Meet Eli Richard, he's a printmaker, but doesn't exactly make your everyday 2D images. He prints on cut building materials including plywood. These flat spaces are sometimes fixed together (think cut-out paper dolls) and are hanging from the ceiling or creating landscapes laid on the floor against the wall. For this installation he collaborated with Amanda Blake and together their artwork centers around recreating an imagined natural landscape made from manufactured materials and designed imagery.
Who Knows America:
“The Americans, we are convincingly told, are the most materialistic of peoples, and on the other hand, they are the most idealistic, the most revolutionary, and conversely, the most conservative; the most rampantly individualistic and simultaneously, the most gregarious and herd-like; the most irreverent toward their elders, contrariwise, the most abject worshipers of ‘Mom.’ They have an unbridled admiration of everything big, from bulldozers to bosoms; and they are in love with everything diminutive, from the ‘small hotel’ in the song to the ‘little women’ in the kitchen”
– John Kouwenhoven, What’s “American” about America?
Desire and modesty in American culture live in an uneasy and sometimes nonsensical, coexistence. Through campy, kitsch-inspired images stemming from her Midwest background, Horvat explores the desires, expectations, and stereotypes of what it means to be a strong-willed and occasionally arrogant American.
Horvat believes that most of what we think, say, do and experience comes from desire. Consciously or not, these desires are constantly shifting and re-defining our sense of who we are as individuals. We want iPhones, greasy burgers, sexual partners and high-ranking jobs because we ultimately think that these things and experiences are directly linked to happiness.
Horvat deconstructs and rearranges a selection of mundane images inspired by iconic American advertising and imagery and uses these images as a way of exploring how visual culture shapes and reflects our own views and values. Additionally, Horvat is interested in how these projected values influence national identity and our place within it.