Exhibition

The hyper-sensory nature of contemporary life demands acts of selection—choosing what to hold on to, what to discard and what can or cannot be ignored. “Cut + Paste” acknowledges collage as both a physical act of creation and representation of ways in which we assemble our lives. Locating intersections and points of interest along personal and communal timelines, these six artists demonstrate the contemporary experience as a series of overlapping compositions rather than distinct containers. Through the use of photography, painting, sculpture, paper-craft and video, these hybrid forms take shape against a world bombarded by information and stimuli. The cross-disciplinary outcomes offer an astute reminder of how beauty and wonder can be found even amid the overwhelming noise.

Through the databases and algorithms of the Internet, Gabriel Byrro’s (BFA Photography and Video) surreal tableaux create pictures in both conversation with and reaction to surrounding discourse. Using appropriated photographs and fine-art techniques, these performatively constructed stages articulate the cacophonic saturation of imagery within our shared field of vision. 

Esmé C. Eldridge’s (BFA Illustration) otherworldly paintings consider and subvert human perceptions of what it means to be beautiful and valued. Depicting dreamlike, anthropomorphized organic forms, Eldridge’s work proposes a rediscovery of the splendor contained within our biodiverse existence.  

Sadia Fakih (MFA Fine Arts) creates layered mixed media sculptures through manipulation and reconfiguration of visual patterns and designs, chiefly those based in Islamic, Victorian and Western pop-culture influences. Informed by postcolonial thought, as well as notions of play and the absurd, Fakih looks for the transitional spaces that emerge when imposed identities collide.

Jihyun Han (MFA Fine Arts) works across sculpture, video and 3D models in an intentional exploration of the mind’s patterns. In Han’s “The Circulation of Intentional Uncertainty” series, the artist draws parallels between the ricochet motions of pinball and obsessive thinking—embracing internal chaos by turning the inexplicable loops and tangents of everyday thoughts into a game rather than an unwanted distraction. 

Barbara Owen (MFA Art Practice) links her studio work with everyday life, combining abstraction and personal ephemera to interrogate the relationships that break and form between them. Owen’s mixed-media collages function as a kind of collective memory; one that transgresses boundaries in an analyzation of the tensions between one and the other, here and there, this and that.  

Paul Simon (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media) creates physical collage-based work, emulating the supremely digital experience of body fragmentation and mediated representation. Re-photographing these assemblages, Simon evokes the complexities of gender and sexuality by complicating the viewers’ relationship between figure, ground and their own vision.