Talk

MFA Fine Arts presents New York City-based artists Marie Lorenz and Dylan Gauthier, who will each discuss their ongoing projects on the social relationship to urban ecology and waterways and "wet images," followed by a lively conversation moderated by urban underground explorer Steven Duncan. 

Marie Lorenz was born in Twentynine Palms, California, and grew up traveling with her military family. She received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. Lorenz has received grants from Artists Space, the Harpo Foundation and the Alice Kimball English Travel Fellowship. In 2008, she was awarded the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize for the American Academy in Rome. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, from High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree, California, to MoMA PS1, in New York City. She has completed solo projects at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York City. Her ongoing project "The Tide and Current Taxi" is an exploration of New York's coastline.

Dylan Gauthier is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator who works through a research-based and collaborative practice centered on experiences of urban ecology, architecture, landscape and social change. Gauthier is a founder of the boat-building and publishing collective Mare Liberum, and of the Sunview Luncheonette, a co-op for art, politics and communalism in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He is co-organizer, with Mariel Villeré, of Freshkills Field R/D, an artist-research residency based at New York City's largest former landfill. Gauthier's individual and collective projects have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, the Parrish Art Museum, CCVA at Harvard University, the 2016 Biennial de Paris (Beirut), (New York:) the Center for Architecture, The International Studio and Curatorial Program, the Chimney, the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase, Columbus College of Art and Design, the Walker Art Center, EFA Project Space, and other venues in the US and abroad. 

Gauthier's writings about art and public space have been published by Contemporary Art Stavanger, Parrish Art Museum, Urban Omnibus, Art in Odd Places and Routledge/Public Art Dialogue, among others. In 2015 he was the NEA-supported Ecological Artist-in-Residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP); in 2016 he was a Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellow (NY), and in 2017/18 he was the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Brandywine River Conservancy and Museum of Art, where his immersive video and sound installation highwatermarks was on view from October 2017 to January 2018. In 2018, he is a resident at Shandaken Projects at Storm King and was a visiting artist at NYU Abu Dhabi. He co-curated (with Kendra Sullivan) the exhibition "Resistance After Nature" at Haverford College in spring of 2017 and "Beyond Species/Beyond Spaces" at Cape Cod Modern House Trust in 2018. Gauthier received his MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, CUNY (2012), and teaches courses on emerging media in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, and ecological art and design at Parsons/The New School.

Steve Duncan is an urban explorer based in New York City. He has extensively explored the New York City sewer system and other tunnels in the New York City area such as the New York City Subway System and Amtrak tunnels that run through the city.