Katina Bitsicas, Nicole Cohen, Jake Couri, Kevin Frech, Sabine Gruffat, and Jason Robinson
Digital Art Exhibitions at the E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center
Wall Academic Center
On View: January 10, 2021— February 20, 2021
Katina Bitsicas
Peripheral, 2018
HD video, 3:26
Artist Statement: Peripheral represents the thoughts that come and go from our subconscious minds. The red line comes in and out of focus, symbolizing fleeting thoughts. The lines are organized like neurons, and flash as if a synapse is firing. From the body of work Involuntary Memory.
Katina Bitsicas is a new media artist who utilizes video, photography, and performance in her art works. Born in East Lansing, Michigan, she currently resides in Columbia, MO. She received her BA from Kalamazoo College and Post-Baccalaureate from SACI in Florence, Italy, and was awarded the Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum Educational Trust Scholarship. Katina then received her MFA from the University of South Florida. She is currently the Program Director and an Assistant Professor of Digital Storytelling at the University of Missouri. She has exhibited in multiple galleries, museums and festivals including The Armory Show in New York, NY; the Satellite Art Fair in New York, NY; PULSE Art Fair in Miami Beach, FL; and Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, NM. She also worked as a production assistant on the Academy Award short-listed documentary film Battle for Brooklyn.
http://www.katinabitsicas.com/
Nicole Cohen
Crystals, 2015
MP4, 3:00
Artist Statement: Crystals is a video art work of a vintage clipping of an interior of cabinets of curiosity (a science room in the 18th Century in France, for exploration of the natural world).
The image of the room is two-dimensional and appears as though you enter into it. Layered and integrated into the image are natural objects, i.e. Roses, gems, diamonds, and more, that are made in 3D animation, and float and travel through space that appears more like a dream state or meditation room. The room derives from a French interior book of a palace in France that still exists. The contrast of natural objects to digitized ones reveals human needs to connect with nature and even design it by mimicking it with technology.
A galactic synthesis between the past and the present interplay showing a fusion of time periods and how we once observed objects of nature by touch and now we are also viewing them through a digital lens. My work questions the relationship of the static and the dynamic literally by placing movement on top of a still image, while also asking what happens when you mix two different realities. Past and present work together to inform the viewers of where the technology has been and where it potentially could go.
Nicole Cohen received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County of Art, Williams College Museum of Art, La B.A.N.K Galerie in Paris, France , at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Autostadt, Wolfsburg, Schloss Britz in Berlin, Germany, American University Museum at Katzen Art Center in Washington D.C., Wave Hill Public Gardens and Cultural Center in the Bronx, and The Museum of the Moving Image in 2019. “Her work is positioned at the crossroads of contemporary reality, personal fantasy, and culturally constructed space. Although trained in painting and drawing, Cohen most frequently uses video as her medium, playing upon its intrinsic capacities to manipulate time, distort scale and environment, and overlay imagery. Consistently interested in engaging her audience and challenging notions of lifestyle, domesticity, celebrity, and social behavior, Cohen also uses the surveillance camera to involve her viewers in their own voyeurism. Her work projects serve as some of the most paradigmatic and successful examples.”, Getty catalogue 2009.
Video courtesy of Shoshana Wayne Gallery and UNPAINTED- The Platform for Digital Art.
Jake Couri
Find Your Ritual, 2019
Single-channel video, 3:00
Artist Statement: My work is concerned with our gradual shift towards a digital existence, presenting an alternate reality to draw the viewer into. Confronting the way our bodies are manipulated and transformed within digital space, while playing on notions of individualism and spirituality through new media. Melding together narratives told through cinema, childhood memories and popular culture regarding both utopian and dystopian environments.
Jake Couri’s practice deals with our collective migration into digital space, confronting notions of existentialism, spiritualism and an autonomous future. Graduatied in 2018 from California College of the Arts with a Master of Fine Arts degree, Jake recently completed an Artist-In-Residence at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, Colorado.
https://jakecouri.com/find-your-ritual
Kevin Frech
COMMUNE, 2019
Single-channel HD video, 5:10
Artist Statement: Commune: (1) to communicate intensely. (2) The smallest community unit in many European countries.
In COMMUNE, a grid of nine people communicates with the viewer non-verbally while interacting with others via their smartphones. They are at once together yet separate, intense but removed, expressive yet occluded, connected to us and to the unseen people they interact with, yet also separated by the same technologies (video and smartphones) that facilitate this communication. Their arrangement and body language, as their collective gaze focuses downward to the texts they read while also projecting their thoughts into the ether, is reminiscent of a church choir with their hymnals.
My work examines the contradictions of contemporary society, where the rise of technology offers the promise of ease, luxury, and connection, yet it often complicates our lives, wastes resources, and alienates us from each other. I also think a lot about currency. Not merely in the sense of “money,” but also in the larger sense of exchange and acceptance. What do we as people value today? And how do we assign those values?
The work centers on the human experience. Even when discussing topics such as global warming or the extinction of animal species, the questions are framed by how humans perceive these catastrophes, and whether we can be made to sufficiently care. I’d like to believe that we can.
© Copyright K. Frech
Kevin Frech received his BFA while studying at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and continued on to receive a Masters in Filmmaking from the Tisch School of Fine Arts, at New York University. Frech’s work explores contradictions existent in our contemporary society and attempts to make his viewers care about the issues proposed through his art. Frech’s work will often include visual tropes from contemporary culture to aid in a visual stimulation typically captured through time lapse videography. His work has been included in exhibitions and shows at the Barrett Art Center, New York, Arte Laguna, Italy, Storefront Media Gallery, Seattle, and now Davidson College.
Sabine Gruffat
Sandwiched, 2019
Unity digital animation, 5:00
Artist Statement: Sandwiched is a video game simulation. This work is a part of a series called Antibodies that engages with the ways video games and 3d animation represent (and misrepresent) the female body. Young avatars (such as this one) follows patterns, react to physics and stimuli, and may speak from a script. They don’t really eat, they don’t have a voice, and they are not able to think for themselves. Theirs is a quiet rebellion, but they will gain strength in numbers.
Sabine Gruffat is a French-American artist who was born in Bangkok, Thailand. After living many years in Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, She immigrated to the United States. She has produced digital media works for public spaces as well as interactive installations that have been shown at the Zolla Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, Art In General, Devotion Gallery, PS1 Contemporary Art Museum, and Hudson Franklin in New York. Currently she is Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She is also a filmmaker with a special interest in the social and political implications of media and technology. Sabine’s films and videos have screened at festivals worldwide including the Image Forum Festival in Japan, The Ann Arbor Film Festival and Migrating Forms in New York. Her feature film I Have Always Been A Dreamer has screened internationally including at the Viennale, MoMA Documentary Fortnight, Cinema du Reel at the Centre Pompidou, and The Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.
https://www.sabinegruffat.com/
Jason Robinson
Crash Test, 2019
Video, 4:29
Artist Statement: Crash Test documents a demolition derby competition at the Orange County Fair, VA. One of the derby entrants has been digitally erased from every shot forcing the software to fill in the blank space with algorithmically chosen content. Phantom cars appear as pixels become elastic. Commercial motion graphics software and family sedans are pushed past their intended uses. In the end everything crashes.
Jason Robinson is a filmmaker and new media artist working primarily in the medium of single-channel experimental video, animated .gifs, and live performance. His artwork has been screened at festivals and galleries both nationally and internationally including The Virginia Film Festival, Charlottesville, VA; Cinesonika, Vancouver BC; The Asheville Art Museum, NC; and Multiplexer, Las Vegas, NV. He is also the creator of Screensavers, an annual video performance series held at the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative in Charlottesville, VA. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA.
