PASADENA, CA — Spread over two buildings and featuring a wide variety of media, the interdisciplinary and experimental nature of the ArtCenter College of Design’s graduate art program was on full display in its MFA Open Studios event. Walking through the corridors of artist studios, attendees were able to admire everything from technically impressive architectural photography by Zengyi Zhao to sculpture made from roughly assembled materials by Andrea Nhuch.
One particularly impressive studio was owned by Shelby Drabman, whose text-based textile pieces carry an edgy, feminist bent and showcase her eye for color. Along with her murals, Drabman also presented a series of handmade books and notebooks which she launched the next day in the garden of Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles. Another artist experimenting with textiles was Meghan Sabik, whose studio walls were lined with dozens of handmade dolls propped up in front of photographs of a grim-looking female model I assumed was the artist, in a sparse white bed, the aforementioned dolls neatly spread over her body. Set along the ground beneath large windows overlooking the street below, the positioning of the photographs and the subject matter within them have psychosexual undertones reminiscent of Mike Kelley’s early stuffed animal work.
It seems a little unfair to mention a few notable artists, as these are the lucky artists who submitted their thesis during Open Studios week. Artists Aussi Chen, Catherine Menard and Daniel Wenger have all held impressive exhibitions in their respective galleries. Ménard’s videos were particularly accomplished, including an animation of a white female figure dancing alongside two red circles. An apparent adept of the theater, his large sculptures of candelabra with actual burning candles were arranged in appropriately darkened rooms, casting delightfully intricate shadows on the walls. Wenger produced a variety of paintings, from the impressive “Unexpurgated Landscape (after Vuillard, for Annette Natanson)” to the aptly named “Painting”, which features two stick figures simply drawn with ideograms of hearts between them – a humorous meditation on the whole point of art.
Although the artists on the program were a decidedly eclectic group, one commonality seemed to be an enthusiasm for the text, either within or alongside the work. In addition to Drabman’s handmade books, artist Madeline Ludwig-Leone has included a pamphlet titled Escape Los Angeles alongside his cartoonish landscape paintings, and many artists have incorporated poetic writing and accompanying texts into their studios and exhibitions, about a program whose teachers include heavyweight critics such as Chris Kraus and Jack Bankowski. Beyond that, however, artists are obviously encouraged to follow their own creative paths.
