January 26 – March 11, 2016
The Four Artists
Jenn Dierdorf
Jared Holt
Siobhan Landry
Deborah Zlotsky
The Contemporary Art Galleries announces its upcoming alumni exhibition, Alumni Biennial (Three) January 26th through March 11th. The exhibition will feature four graduates from the University of Connecticut’s Master of Fine Arts program. Juried by Jay Lehman, co-owner of New York City’s Morgan Lehman Gallery. Alumni Biennial (Three) will feature recent artwork by Deborah Zlotsky (MFA 1989), Jenn Dierdorf (MFA 2008) Siobhan Landry (MFA 2011) and Jared Holt (MFA 2014). Connecting each of these artists is a strong sense of play, either through style and appropriated imagery as with Dierdorf’s new flower portraits, through response to medium and process as with Zlotsky’s paintings and wall drawings, through the interactivity of Holt’s Typewriter, or through the dream-like engagement with narrative in Landry’s video, A Place to Put Her. What starts as play gives way to complexity, engaging with important ideas of gender, sexuality, life, death, and the artist’s response.
Deborah Zlotsky’s paintings emerge from choices and decisions that blur her understanding of the difference between accident and intention. Revisions begin to create new structures, which lead to new systems or languages. Continually rupturing and repairing new passages allows the oscillation between mistake and correction to remain, thus invigorating her canvases.
Deborah Zlotsky, PIttsburgh left, oil on canvas, 2014
Deborah Zlotsky, Sotto Voce, oil on canvas, 2014
Siobhan Landry working in video and photography plays with the inherent contextual deficiency of her medium. She is interested in how talking in the form of storytelling can be overactive, nonsensical, and self-defeating, and her engagement with narrative is akin to dreaming. Elements are garbled up, re-contextualized, maybe even transformed, but nevertheless tethered to reality.
Siobhan Landry, A place to put her_5, photograph, 2015
Siobhan Landry, A place to put her_9, photograph, 2015
Jenn Dierdorf is a painter and printmaker who is interested in the bizarre, uncanny, absurd, and contradictory. She uses the visual language and humor of the cartoon line combined with art historical references such as the Chicago imagists, Rococo, and Impressionists, to create playful images that discuss gender and sexuality in visual art.
Jenn Dierdorf , Untitled Flower Portraits (February), Acrylic on Wood Panel, 2015
Jenn Dierdorf, Untitled Flower Portraits (June), Acrylic on Wood Panel, 2015
Jared Holt works with installations and sound to explore the simultaneous nature of past and present events. His work often explores the ephemerality of sound, and how sounds from the past can affect current events through their recollection of moments and memories.
Jared Holt, I Want, Chair, Chewing gum, paper, text, florescent light, 2015
Jared Holt, Glued Together, Found photograph, wood, 2015