The ICP-Bard MFA in photography is one of the most distinguished courses of its kind in the US with faculty and master class staff including Nayland Blake, Brian Wallis, Nancy Davenport, Vince Aletti, Larry Fink and James Welling. Every year the graduating class puts on an exhibition at the ICP School in New York. As always the works are an eclectic mix of photography, performance, installation and video. We showcase below a selection of works from the class of 2007.
CHARLES ATHERTON
'I make large format color photographs of the landscape, with an eye towards its social and political manifestations. I invite viewers to better understand their own relationship with our current culture and moment in history. Ours is a time when everything feels at once ordinarily normal and subtly uneasy, when day to day concerns run from the banality of conducting our lives to the subtle anxiety of security in a post 9/11 world. What do you see when you look?'
Charles Atherton was born in 1973 in Washington, DC. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Atherton has a B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina 1996 and an MFA from ICP-Bard in 2007.
DAVID SMITH
'Self Timer' is a series of 40x30 inch photographs where I balance the camera on my head, stand in front of a mirror, and set the camera on self timer. I am attempting to make a picture of myself where I am concerned primarily with my role as the support of the camera, and secondarily as the subject of the photograph. I am playing with the artificially accidental viewpoint of the camera, and notions of self-conciousness, ego, control, and giving up control over self-representation in this case.
David Smith was born in Washington DC in 1977. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
CATHERINE KUNKEMUELLER
My work explores a psychological sense of self and isolation. Through a subjective view of everyday spaces, I look at issues of emptiness and connection; sterility and human trace; and presence and absence. I photograph in everyday locations from my personal life - domestic spaces of family and friends, offices, outdoor urban areas, and rural landscapes. All are negotiated spaces of human interaction and attempts to claim personal space. By interspersing these situations, I call attention to the similarities between what occurs in these spaces. Recurring formal elements, such as the rectangle (as a hole or emptiness) and lines (markers of separation) serve as supporting structure to link the content of the work across the various locations and representational styles. Unlike the powerful modernist grid, the rectangle in my work is abject, often afloat within the frame, a reference to the isolated individual at sea in the world. www.kunkemueller.com
DAVIS THOMPSON-MOSS
My photographs are of performances. I usually then present them in a new performative context. The emphasis is on the relationships in making, presenting and viewing the images.
MARLA CAPLAN
The first image is from my "Studio Stills" project and the second from "Garden Tapestry," a 12x9 foot inkjet print on fabric. My newest work is concerned with ideas of nature and artifice in photography and has to do with the layers of perception and representation that construct our experience of reality. I am especially interested in issues of the environment and the built landscape. www.marlaleighcaplan.com
KENRIC MCDOWELL
Like a sailor piloting a sailboat or a surfer riding the tides, I harness natural forces like gravity or the evolved capacity to recognize faces and symmetry to make perceptible the mechanics of cognition and the sensory and material substrate on which art ferments. I am putting together an online portfolio for phytonics.net, a site associated with Powerhouse books. I'm also participating in a group show at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn, opening 27 April.
ADAM BLUMBERG
By pairing photographs of my friends, family and the undistinguished built landscapes of Southern Illinois with installations of a living room and a classic rock blaring refrigerator full of beer, I explore my nostalgia for my lower-class Midwestern upbringing. Through photographs ranging from my uncle drinking a beer in the front yard at a family gathering, to the banality of an interstate highway rest stop or the absurdity of a naked man on a mechanical bull at a motorcycle rally, I celebrate the pragmatic simplicity of the people, places and events that surround me.
BRINA THURSTON
My work has inhabited a space somewhere between humor and humility. I have approached this with a variety of mediums with a strong focus on video. Having found the relationship between sound and image ideal for this exploration I have taken documentary imagery and paired them with non-diagetic soundtracks. My most recent video is a clip from a documented colonoscopy where I have manipulated the audio to contain a karaoke accompaniment to the song that comes on the doctor's radio during the procedure. 'Colon Karaoke' highlights the everyday absurdity we endure in the most personally penetrating modern day experiences. It also plays with issues of power, sex and humility in popular culture.
Brina Thurston was born in 1977 New Yorkwhere she still lives. www.brinathurston.com
LARA ALCANTARA
My current work is an investigation of female identity. Inspired by my recent marriage and seeing first-hand the negotiations that occur when two people develop a common, somehow merged social identity, my images explore the different desires and conflicts that occur within myself during this process. Drawing from both narcissism and psychoanalytic insights, my work explores how I see myself and my evolving identity and how others see me. The title for the series is 'Telenova' (soap opera). My life played out in images, introducing both performance and real events that have been part or not of my life.
www.laraalcantara.com
ICP-Bard MFA 2007 Class thesis show
Until 26 May
ICP School
1114 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York
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