Possible Subject Positions

 

Possible Subject Positions
November 17, 2017-February 3, 2018*
Reception: Friday, November 17, 5:30-7:30 pm

Maud Bryt ’83, Merill Comeau, Anna Schuleit Haber, Adriane Herman, Elena Kovylina, Tracie Morris, and Alison Saar

Special Guest on November 17: Masary Studios/Sound Sculpture

 

Who, or what, is a subject? When does a subject take a position, and can that position change? Possible Subject Positions explores the poetic and transitory nature of the subject, and what aspects of subjectivity are inscribed in gesture, shape, language, and material culture.

Maud Bryt, "Ask Me a Question"The plaster sculptures of Maud Bryt ’83 evoke physical and emotional states of being. Their precariously balanced and textural forms are based on the figure, landscapes and imagery that Bryt encounters and collects in her daily life and travels. She has shown paintings and sculpture in exhibitions across the United States and the United Kingdom including a recent solo exhibition at the T Gallery in Southhampton, New York. In 2015 her painting of Natalie, her mother-in-law, was selected for the BP Portrait Award Exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in London and traveled to Scotland and Northern Ireland. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1983, Bryt went on to Harvard where she received her BA and then to the New York Studio School where she earned her MFA. Bryt currently lives and works in New York.

 

Merill Comeau’s fiber art delves into personal memory and family history. Her mixed-media installations and garments explore narratives of repair and Merrill Comeau, "Climbing the Tree of Knowledge"regeneration; she deconstructs, reconstructs, and alters clothing to disrupt, reorder, and build stories exploring common human concerns. She has shown her work in over sixty exhibitions including solo shows at North Hill Art Gallery in Needham, Danforth Art Museum and School, McIninch Gallery of Southern New Hampshire University, and Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. In addition to her studio work, Comeau has facilitated over 30 community art projects – often dealing with identity -  and is a teaching artist for the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services making art with at-risk youth residing in secure treatment centers. During this exhibition, Comeau will return to campus and work with students and gallery visitors in an altered-clothing workshop on identity. 

 

Anna Schuleit Haber

Anna Schuleit Haber’s painting installations push the boundaries of recognition. They incorporate many aspects of artmaking including painting, drawing, performance, installation art, architecture, and community. Haber is inspired by hand-writing, graffiti, and any direct trace of the human hand. She states: “The paintings I’m interested in have nothing to do with the world of ideas. I want them to remain rich in stuff, in shapes, in textures, but doggedly story-less.” Haber will be creating a site-specific painting installation specially designed for the Lamont Gallery. She has shown her work internationally at galleries including Saatchi Gallery, London and the Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts. Haber has created numerous installations, set-designs, and performance work and has been a visiting artist / guest lecturer at Brown University, MIT, Smith College, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, among others. She studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and creative writing at Dartmouth College. Haber was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard as well as Yaddo, Banff and Bogliasco Foundation. In 2006, Haber was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship Award for her work honoring the lives lived within mental health institutions.

 

Adriane Herman, Inhale/Ex-Hail (Love Is All Around)Adriane Herman’s list-based work captures the self through everyday language. Like Haber’s work, Herman’s numerous site-specific installations using collected lists and notes jotted on scraps of paper, is also inspired by handwritten text. Her 2016 installation Inhale/Ex-Hail (Love Is All Around), originally commissioned by the Johnson County Library in Overland Park, Kansas, will be on view in this exhibition. For this piece, Herman collected and carefully arranged various love notes – from the simple to the heartfelt – and then created wallpaper from the composition. Visitors to the space will be surrounded by small sentiments of love that repeat and extend from floor to ceiling.  Herman has shown her work in many group exhibitions including The Dalarnas Museum in Falun, Sweden, the Portland Museum of Art, and The Brooklyn Museum. Herman has also had solo exhibitions at Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York, the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art, The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and Kiosk Gallery, Kansas City, among others. She is an associate professor at Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine.

 

Elena Kovylina’s video, Egalité (Equality), filmed in Palace Square, St. Petersburg, is a proposition for staging political resistance. Filmed in 2008, the film Elena Kovylina, "Egalité" (Equality)portrays a number of individuals –  who differ in terms of gender, age, nationality, and profession – standing precariously on stools. Kovylina’s piece is a satire on democracy in Russian society, highlighting the double-standards of trying to “fit in” in a society where one is required to participate. In her piece, Kovylina is “demonstrating the impossibility of any global ‘golden age’ of equality and freedom.” Kovylina studied at the Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow and Berlin University of the Arts; she received her MBA at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow. Her work is in the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, National Museum of Woman in the Arts, Washington DC, and in other public and private collections.

 

The work of interdisciplinary poet and sound artist Tracie Morris examines race, gender, and embodiment. Her sound installations have been presented at Tracie Morris, Photo from PoetryFoundation.orgthe Whitney Biennial and MoMA, both in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and many other galleries and museums. Morris presents her work as a poet, performer and scholar around the globe and has presented, performed and researched in almost thirty countries and forty US states. Morris holds an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College, has studied classical British acting technique at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and American acting techniques at Michael Howard Studios. Morris has a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and is Professor and Coordinator of Performance + Performance Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. 

 

Alison Saar’s prints offer meditations on identity, cultural history, and race. Working with the female figure, Saar’s images focus on the marginalization of Alison Saar, "Tongues Tied"both women and minorities. She “recognizes the body as a site of identity formation, acknowledging historical injustices and presenting defiant figures that seem to transcend their pasts.” Many of her works weave in historical and mythological themes tied to identity.  Saar credits her mother – acclaimed artist Betye Saar – and her father – painter and art conservator Richard Saar – with exposing her to metaphysical and spiritual traditions as well as feeding her curiosity about other cultures. She attended Scripps College in Claremont, California where she received her BA in art history and she earned her MFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Saar’s work has been exhibited in many group and individual exhibitions including a solo exhibition at L.A. Louver in Venice, CA. She was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and completed a residency in Roswell, New Mexico. Saar lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

 

Visit our Flickr page to see photos from this exhibition and events.

 

Special Guest and Events: Illuminating Bodies
Friday, November 17, 2:00-7:30 pm:

Masary Studios, Sound Sculpture, Photo By Aram BoghosianMasary Studios brings their Sound Sculpture to the Lamont Gallery for one day only!

Interact with the Sound Sculpture creating spontaneous and participatory performances through the afternoon and during the opening reception.

 

Sound Sculpture is an interactive instrument/art installation comprised of large blocks that change color and emit sound. The piece is designed to be participatory and collaborative. “Arranging the blocks in space changes the triggered sound and light patterns (rhythm, pitch, color, texture, etc) produced by the sculpture - in this way participants are creating physical and sonic structures collectively and simultaneously.” 

 

Masary Studios, Sound Sculpture, Photo By Aram Boghosian Masary Studios specializes in reconsidering environments by creating site-specific installations using sound, light, interactivity, and performance. The three principal members of Masary Studios – Ryan Edwards, Maria Finkelmeier and Sam Okerstrom-Lang – have backgrounds that include degrees in fine art, classical and world percussion, as well as years of experience in West African music studies, painting, new music curation and direction, teaching at the university and conservatory levels and more. Masary Studios was created in 2014 and since then they have designed a number of large-scale musical and installation events in city centers and for nighttime festivals, including most recently, the Waking The Monster piece on Fenway Park as part of the Boston Illuminus Festival.

 

Image Credits (from top down):
Possible Subject Positions postcard – featuring image of Elena Kovylina’s video, Egalité. Maud Bryt, Ask Me A Question, 2016, Plaster, burlap, acrylic paint. Merill Comeau, Climbing the Tree of Knowledge, Mixed media. Anna Schuleit Haber, image of painting in process. Adriane Herman, Inhale/Ex-Hail (Love Is All Around), 2016, Installation view from the Johnson County Library in Overland Park, Kansas. Elena Kovylina, Egalité, 2008, Video still. Photograph of Tracie Morris from the Poetry Foundation. Alison Saar, Tongues Tied. Masary Studios, Sound Sculpture, both images by Aram Boghosian.
 
Lamont Gallery programs are supported in part by the Michael C. Rockefeller ’56 Visiting Artists Fund.