Target Gallery

In this nationally competitive opportunity, one artist is selected by a panel of experts to mount a solo exhibition in Target Gallery . In 2020, Tai Hwa Goh creates site-specific floral paper sculptures that bloom, but warp over time, much like artificial selection compared to the wild. She explores the historical, sociological, and psychological influences that have shaped floristry and human desire to mold the environment.

Goh’s layered installations are meticulously crafted from printed and cut wax paper, creating large buoyant blooming shapes, mimicking flowers or plants. In Target Gallery’s site-specific installation, these paper constructions burst from the walls and piping. Goh configures her delicate forms to embody a metaphor on human’s desire to construct their environments and how under these constructs, nature will inevitably find a way to continue flourishing.

Goh creates artificial floral and botanical “arrangements” as exaggerated unnatural forms, inspired by the historical and psychological influences of traditional floristry. ”Human desires have distorted the naturalness of organically grown plants, because humans select only the most beautiful and glorifying plants. This artificial selection resulted in the monstrous, unnatural and asymmetrical entities that were undistinguishable from their natural cousins in wildlife,” she said.

As a result, this installation reflects the tension of human’s desire to beautify their interior spaces with nature versus the wild and uncontrollable forms that burst and bloom from these environments.

Goh was selected from more than 150 North American applicants as part of Target Gallery’s annual nationwide competition, Open Call for a Solo Exhibition. The jurors were: Maryland-based artist and curator Isabel Manalo; Baltimore-based artist and curator Jackie Milad, and Don Russell, university curator and director of provisions research for arts and social change at George Mason University.

According to Manalo, “Her printed paper grows like moss or mold, and oftentimes merges with mechanisms that allude to a science lab or workshop. The work subtly raises questions about the state of our environment in their playful and ironic approach in regards to color choice, mark making and scale.”

“Her otherworldly landscapes and forms, although beautiful, also poetically call attention to the oddity of human-designed nature. She examines the tension between ‘natural vs manufactured’ through her use of color and material choices,” said Milad.

Isabel Manalo is a visual artist who has been showing her work internationally since 1999. Her work is included in a number of public and private collections such as the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, the permanent collections of the US Embassies in Bulgaria, Philippines, Kazakhstan and Nepal. Her work has been shown at the Orlando Museum of Art, Stony Brook University’s Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, the McLean Project for the Arts, Arlington Arts Center, Maryland Art Place, the Katzen Arts Center, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art and has been the subject of group and solo shows in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Orlando, New York and Berlin. She was featured in New American Paintings in 2004 and 2006 and was awarded a Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2008, 2009 and 2011 with support from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation for 2009. Manalo’s work is included in the Drawing Center and White Columns curated artist registries. Isabel is the Founder and Chief Collaborator of The Studio Visit (TSV), an art journal featuring artist interviews with artists in their studios. Her work with the Takt International Artist Residency as a Visiting Artist and Curator continues today with a newly launched (2018) Berlin Fellowship Award that supports one female artist of color to spend one month in Berlin at the Takt Residency.

Her work is represented in Washington D.C. by Addison Ripley Fine Art where she has had four solo shows in 2009, 2012, 2016 and 2018/19. Her next solo show is at the Facebook DC offices from September – December 2019. This past June, a solo exhibition of Maia Cruz Palileo opened at the Katzen Art Center at American University that Isabel curated. It is up through October 20, 2019. She served on the Board of Directors and the Visual Arts Committee for the District of Columbia Arts Center from 2010 – 2012. From 2012 – 2013 she served as a Visiting Artist and Curator at Takt International Artist Residency in Berlin where she lived with her family from 2012 – 2015. She currently teaches full time at the Edmund Burke School and prior to that taught at American University and George Mason University. Isabel received her MFA in Painting from Yale University, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BS from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Isabel currently lives and works in Bethesda, MD.

Jackie Milad (Baltimore City, MD) Creates textured works on paper and canvas. Her artwork has been featured in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Select exhibitions include: Grizzly Grizzly (Philadelphia, PA), School 33 Art Center (Baltimore, MD), Phoebe Projects curated by Alex Ebstein (Baltimore, MD), Lycoming College (Lycoming, PA), Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA), Flashpoint (Washington D.C.), Museo de Arte de Mazatlan (Mazatlan, MX), DiFOCUR de Sinaloa Galleria (Culiacan, MX), Transmitter (Brooklyn, NY), Arlington Art Center (Arlington, VA), Goucher College, Silber Gallery (Baltimore, MD). In 2010, 2016, 2019 Milad was awarded an individual Artist Grant from Maryland State Arts Council. In 2018 she was named a Sondheim Semi-Finalist and in 2019 a Sondheim Finalist. Jackie was an inaugural resident of Creative Alliance at the Patterson and also held a residency at Vermont Studio Center. Milad received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, and her MFA from Towson University. Besides her active studio practice, Jackie Milad also has an extensive career as a curator and educator, where she has committed many years to the education and support of emerging artists.

Jackie’s curatorial career began as a co-founder of the Transmodern Festival, an artist-run performance art and experimental media festival that was based in Baltimore. More recently, Milad served as the Chief Curator for The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, Delaware. She has also held the position of Gallery Curator for the Adele H. Stamp Student Union’s Stamp Gallery and Acquisition Advisor for the Stamp’s Contemporary Art Collection at the University of Maryland in College Park. Currently Jackie is an Assistant Director for the Joseph Meyerhoff Center of Career Development, and an Adjunct Professor in Curatorial Practice MFA Program at Maryland Institute College of Art.

Don Russell has been an active contemporary art curator and arts administrator since 1979. His research focuses on the exploration and development of new social contexts for art. He is currently GMU’s University Curator, responsible for programming exhibitions and public art on the Fairfax, Manassas and Arlington campuses. Additionally he directs Provisions Research Center for Art & Social Change, providing creative resources for community-engaged public art projects. He is co-founder with Edgar Endress of Floating Lab Collective. Don has produced over one hundred exhibitions as well as public art commissions, residencies, conferences and field projects. His work spans all contemporary art media with particular emphasis on research-as-art, public art, new media, photography and artists’ publications.

Don has extensive experience managing and directing contemporary arts, philanthropic and publishing ventures. He is President of Art Resources International and previously served as Executive Director of Washington Project for the Arts and had various leadership roles at Visual Studies Workshop.