Date of Award

Spring 5-19-2017

Author's School

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Author Department/Program

Graduate School of Art

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

My work and this thesis engage in the language of fragmentation, the everyday, and liminality. I create work that both depicts and becomes liminal space, I am interested in the in-between, the indistinct. My paintings reside in an intermediate stage between representation and abstraction, embodiments of everyday surfaces and objects of banality: I look at the periphery. The work comes from a distinct awareness of the body in space and the gaze. I turn my gaze to the materials of liminal space: the threshold of linoleum tiles, the boundary of a window. The surfaces that I represent speak to space that is fragmented and bodies that are displaced. I look to Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, and Helen Scalway to put words to the inexpressible state of liminality. I discuss artists who share my conceptual concerns relating to the everyday, objects and bodies in space, the window and light, and formal painting inquiries, such as Gerhard Richter, Ellsworth Kelly, Silvia Plimack Mangold, Agnes Martin, and Robert Gober. My work and this thesis do not attempt to explain or to define, but both reside in a liminal state of belonging and un-belonging. What follows is, as Roland Barthes puts it, “A dictionary not of definitions but of twinklings {scintillations}.”

Language

English (en)

Program Director

Patricia Olynyk

Program Director's Department

Graduate School of Art

Thesis Advisor

Buzz Spector

Committee Member

Jamie Adams

Committee Member

Jamie Adams

Committee Member

Monika Weiss

Committee Member

Jesse Vogler

Artist's Statement

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7X065HP

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