Posts like these are tricky. Every year, a growing number of MFA photo programs across the country churn out ripe, excited graduates, ready to seek their fortune in a rapidly evolving art market. Some will use their new relationships and refined smarts to stake claim on the art world, while tastemakers and opportunists alike try to predict who’s “hot,” much like taking bids on Etsy or Shake Shack’s recent public offerings. But what excites us most about this year’s ICP-Bard MFA graduates is their commitment to a range of photographic methods. Their work is hip yet thoughtful, and is consistent while rarely exuding a particularly "ICP-Bard" aesthetic. They continue to blur rigid categories, incorporating both process-heavy and straightforward documentary traditions, sometimes in the same series. Without further ado, we've culled together a selection of six standouts from ICP/Bard’s MFA class of 2015.
"The Future of Photography" is a vaguely loaded gun. Curators, ourselves included, love buzzy prompts like "Let's push boundaries," "Show us something new..." and other leading terms that hope for the next big thing. While we'd grandiosely expect every open call to expose us to uncharted ideas, we're keeping this one simple: show us something "F*cked Up."
We'll leave this open to your interpretation. Whether it's a purely mind bending visual experience that leaves us seizing in our studios, or documentary work that pushes into the unknown, we want to see it. Show us photography-based work that will make us blink and twitch like never before. And maybe even lose our lunch.
Rachel Stern's portraits and still-life photographs in highly constructed studio environments swap natural and fabricated scenarios, evoking a panic and confusion in her viewers. Her references include a range of sources, from current pop-cultural icons and drag-queen culture to classical Greco-Roman iconography, fusing high and low culture with seamless ease. Models mimic classical poses; arms, breasts, and other body parts protrude into the frame, and ritualistic symbols sit quietly upon plinths and other surfaces, prodding viewers to question their historical anchor, relationship and relevance. Her pop-up solo exhibition "A Certain Age," presented by Humble Arts Foundation opens this Friday, June 5th at 6pm at The Common in Brooklyn, NY as part Bushwick Open Studios. In advance of her show, we spent some quality internet time with Rachel to get a deeper dive into her work, and the generous individuals who have helped to shape her artistic practice.
We're not entirely certain whether Richard Prince's latest appropriation exercise is as radical or groundbreaking as his earlier work, or whether it's worth all the "you mad, bro?" kerfuffle as it's recently ignited among the Facebook-commenting i-literati (we prefer Sean Fader's much smarter approach late last year), though we realize he's probably having the last $100,000 laugh. But we're somewhat certain that Instagram was a one-off opportunity, and he'll quickly move on to another medium of appropriation. So these 9 photographers who generously participated in Humble's Instagram residencies over the past two months are hopefully safe. You can catch more of their inspiring work, which ranges from Shane Lavalette's use of the application as a sketchbook for future projects, to Roxana Azar and Anastasia Samoylova's experimentation with in-phone manipulation tools, by clicking thru their photos in this post.
Catharine Maloney's photographs are not technically beautiful. They're not pictures (most) people would immediately think to hang over their couch, nor are they the types of images camera-vest wearing Facebook forum commenters might use as flexing examples of their immaculate Photoshop wizardry. Most of those folks would probably take issue with the spontaneous sloppiness her work. Maloney's photographs are a refreshing exercise - a playful, collaborative process that's stripped of academic theory and pretensions in exchange for the simple joys of having fun while making art. Sure there's an unspoken dialog on photographic process, collecting moments and analyzing interpersonal interactions, and her work touches on gender and gaze, but at the crux of it all is the desire to experiment and have fun. Just in time for the release of her new book, Teleplay Pt 1, published by Skinnerboox Books, we caught up with Ms. Maloney to hear more about the process and ideas behind the work.