January 26 - March 18, 2012
Remnants of the Real: Art 100: LMU Faculty Artists was Curated by Claudia Bohn-Spector. The exhibition highlighted the work of eleven full-time faculty members of the Fine Arts Department at Loyola Marymount University. Remnants of the Real featured artworks that reflect the dynamic range of contemporary artistic practice today, from straightforward painting and graphic design to conceptual photography and multimedia installations, creating works that resonate deeply with the myriad representational demands of our digital age.
View events related to this exhibition.
Curator's Statement
Few people have the imagination for reality.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Reality, or so the dictionary tells us, is the world or the state of things as they actually are, not as they appear or as we might imagine them to be. Reality, the raw stuff of life, is tangible and familiar and accessible to sensory experience and scientific inquiry. More broadly defined, reality can also be seen as the totality of all things, ideas, and events, both past and present, that shape our lives from moment to moment.
In that sense, reality encompasses not just immediate objects and occurrences, but mental and cultural constructs as well, such as language, perceptions, values, and beliefs - one might even say these things generate reality so that we can act meaningfully within in it. Language, especially, is a powerful means in and through which our sense of reality takes form. It helps us to make sense of ourselves and of the world around us.
For centuries, the materiality of human existence has given powerful impulses to artists and writers as they search for the truths that reality, in all its myriad manifestations, often obscures. This quest for the true and authentic seems particularly relevant at a time when "reality," however broadly defined, seems to be in short supply. The dawn of virtual worlds, interactive digital media, reality television, and the constantly shifting realms of the World Wide Web draw us deeper and deeper into mediated experiences that bear little resemblance to the physical world. Yet, "good fiction is made of that which is real," the writer Ralph Ellison reminds us, even if reality has become increasingly slippery and hard to catch out.
The eleven artists in this exhibition, all faculty members of the Studio Arts Department of Loyola Marymount University, each address aspects of what is real in one form or another; they employ a diversity of media, subjects, and creative approaches to convey their individual concerns. Together they reflect the dynamic range of contemporary artistic practice today - from straightforward painting and graphic design to conceptual photography and multimedia installations - in works that resonate deeply with the myriad representational demands of our digital age.
- Claudia Bohn, Spector, exhibition curator
Featured Artists
- Michael Brodsky
- Jane Brucker
- Saeri Cho Dobson
- Han Dai-Yu
- Rudy Fleck
- Garland Kirkpatrick
- Dmitry Kmelnitsky
- Terry Lenihan
- Diane Meyer
- Teresa Muñoz
- Michael Tang