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The Late Shift Online

The Late Shift Online: Post Grad Artists

Tune in for the virtual program
www.facebook.com/torpedofactory

Join us from the comfort of your own home for an online celebration of new exhibitions, artists, and ideas.

Travel through history with Melanie Kehoss’s Through the Kitchen Door, on view now in the New Project Studio, and experience a follow-up live conversation with the artist.

We host an in-depth panel discussion with the two summer 2020 Post Grad artists, Ashley Llanes and Luis A. Navas-Reyes.

 

This online event is FREE, but RSVP is Requested

Schedule of Activities 

7:00 – 7:02 pm: Introduction

7:03 – 7:25 pm: Live Conversation: Melanie Kehoss: Through the Kitchen Door
If you have questions for Melanie about her installation in the New Project Studio, send them to [email protected] for consideration and you may hear them answered live.

7:30 – 7:45 pm: Post Grad Artist Presentation: Ashley Llanes

7:45 – 8:00 pm: Post Grad Artist Presentation: Luis A. Navas-Reyes

8:00 – 8:25 pm: Featured Late Shift Talk: Post Grad Artists Roundtable Discussion with Leslie Mounaime, Torpedo Factory Art Center’s curator of exhibitions

8:25 – 8:30 pm: Closing Remarks

About the Post Grad Artists

Ashley Llanes is a queer identifying artist who makes personally political work about her Cuban American identity, her affinity for Miami’s culture , and her relationship with her upbringing as a Cuban Catholic as well as the strict cultural expectations that come with it. Ashley has a balance of reconciliation and criticism for her religious and traditional upbringing in her work. These topics are demonstrated through photos, collage, zine and bookmaking.

During her residency, Ashley will continue her exploration of materials and focusing on the concept of intergenerational trauma. Ashley describes, ” I would like to use large scale collages to go back through my family history and map out how my trauma relates to that of my ancestors. I have already begun to test these concepts with existing archives, family photos and found objects. A big component in this piece is also the investigation of whether I feel fit to have children, and what my part in contributing to the next generation would look like. With this residency providing a space, I would be able to plan out multiple pieces at a time and be able to produce works on a much larger scale. I think this concept is something that most every human can empathize with.”

Luis A. Navas-Reyes is a visual artist whose work is a translation of abstract compositions that build upon his unique and personal visual vocabulary. His work is rooted in his identity, culture, environments, abstraction, power structures, familiar and historical histories. Utilizing media such as printmaking, drawings, ceramics, and bookmaking Luis explores themes, narratives, and forms. In 2018, Luis was awarded “Jurors Choice” at Artworks juried show. He was also selected to participate in the Dolph Project that contextualized contemporary art practice. Luis completed his BFA at James Madison University in 2018. In 2019, he was awarded a to research in Sevilla, Spain.

During his residency, Luis will be focusing on several projects, the first is called “Burnt Pages”. Luis states, “The goal is for Latino American’s to write down their stories ranging from everyday life to life-changing moments, why? Because in our shared past our stories were burnt, lost and fragmented due to colonialism and nature. But what if I make copies and burn the pages the stories are on? Why would I burn the stories? All Latino Americas are the conquerors and the conquered. We are the traitors but also the resilient. For me to burn my people’s stories is to give them life. Life carries on in the memories of others passing down the feeling they felt when they read those stories. Eventually, all being lost to time again. Cycles very familiar to Latin American history. What do I do with the ashes? Is there a recovery? How do people deal with loss? How do Latino Americans deal with that fragmented history? What’s that histories relationship to contemporary times? This residency would benefit the number of people I reach for this kind of project from everyday people to specific communities.”

11th Annual Alexandria Sidewalk Sale

In celebration of the 11th Annual Alexandria Sidewalk Sale, Torpedo Factory Art Center is offering select artworks from our resident artists up to 20% off. Explore both our Union Street and Waterfront boardwalk entrances. Additional artworks will be available to browse inside.

 

Sidewalk Sale Hours (please note the Art Center will remain open 10 am – 6pm):

  • Saturday – 12 pm – 5 pm
  • Sunday – 12 pm – 5 pm

Emerging Art in the DMV: A Panel Discussion

Join us for an in depth panel discussion with the participating artists and jurors from Target Gallery’s 2020 Emerging Artists exhibition. For this panel discussion, the exhibition jurors and artist participate in a roundtable discussion about the current climate for emerging artists in the area.

The selected artists are: MK Bailey, Mahsa R. Fard, Zia Palmer, and Latrelle Rostant.

The jurors are: Alexandra “Rex” Delafkaran, Jaynelle Hazard, and Amy Lokoff.

Part of the August 2020 Late Shift Online: Emerging Artists.

 

Image Credit: Zia Palmer, “Railroad”, 2019. Silver Gelatin Print.

The Late Shift Online: Emerging Artists

Friday, August 14 | 7pm
www.facebook.com/torpedofactory

Join us from the comfort of your own home for an online celebration of new exhibitions, artists, and ideas.

Take a virtual tour of Melanie Kehoss’s Through the Kitchen Door, on view now in the New Project Studio.

This month we host an in-depth panel discussion with the participating artists and jurors from Target Gallery’s 2020 Emerging Artists exhibition. For this panel discussion, the exhibition jurors and artist participate in a virtual roundtable discussion about the current climate for emerging artists in the area.

The selected artists are: MK Bailey, Mahsa R. Fard, Zia Palmer, and Latrelle Rostant.

The participating jurors are: Alexandra “Rex” Delafkaran and Amy Lokoff.

We will also highlight current projects you can visit at the Art Center, and a glimpse of what’s coming in the months ahead.

 

Schedule of Activities: 

7:00 – 7:02 pm: Introduction

7:03 – 7:10 pm: Virtual Tour: Melanie Kehoss: “Through the Kitchen Door”

7:10 – 7:30 pm: Emerging Artists: Meet the Artists

7:30 – 8:25 pm: Featured Late Shift Talk: “Emerging Artists” Roundtable Discussion

8:25 – 8:30 pm: Closing Remarks

 

 

About the Emerging Artists

 

MK Bailey, is a Washington, D.C. based artist working primarily in oil paint. Her work explores themes such as femininity, kinship, and death through unexpectedly colorful paintings. Each painting contains layers of imagery that are individually pleasant but collaged together to create a darker narrative. The work featured in this exhibition, take a slightly different approach to presenting the deeper world reference her own feelings of nostalgia encapsulated by a specific thought, memory, or dream. She received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia.

 

Mahsa R. Fard, is a painter currently residing in Baltimore, MD. She often paints man-made large scale structures such as cities, stadiums, and apparatuses. She tends to create a new association by introducing unusual color and spatial relationships. Growing up in Iran, she has always been conscious of the dominance of rigid patriarchal gaze both in the public and private sphere. Accessing public and private domains as a female requires subversive strategies. Her imagery reflects a woman’s forced duplicitous roles in these domains. Mahsa contemplates and practice these strategies in her painting and writing through metaphors of censorship, sarcasm, camouflage, cover, and disguise. Mahsa has recently graduated from LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

 

Zia Palmer, is a D.C. metro area based artist focused on graphic design and photography. She received her BFA in photography and minor in graphic design from George Mason University. Zia’s photography practice focuses on historic photographic processes and explores the relationship and liminality between time, memory and place. The artwork featured in this exhibition will explore Zia’s “Las Orillas Del Mundo” series, a project that investigates being Mexican, American, and neither. The work is a compilation of photography, found objects, and family photos. Over the past two years Zia has traveled to specific ghost towns in New Mexico where her grandmother and ancestors were born.  She brings her mother and grandmother with her each time which has served as a way to reconnect to their heritage, some thing that has felt distant from them over time.

 

Latrelle Rostant, is a Maryland-based artist who primarily works with textile and fiber. She has a BFA  from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA at School of Art Institute of Chicago, with a concentration in Fiber and Materials. Through woven textiles, Latrelle explores what it means to be too foreign for the place she comes from, and the spaces she now occupies. Her work embraces the the carnival culture of her native Trinidad and Tobago which has become a space where the culture of those who were bought or came to the island are able make something that reflected, this third place for the new culture they became a part of. Each culture taking their own culture and adapting it to what they encountered when they arrived to the islands. Taking the prompt of adaptation Latrelle has adapted the loom to make objects, that like the artist, do not inherently reflect how they were made. The modular loom she created for this exhibitions, allows her to make woven objects that not only respond to how they are warped on it, but they also respond to what the artist sees as she is weaving on the modular loom. Looking at and understanding how tools, technique, space, and material can be used to make objects that cause  to reflect her own understanding of self. A third place that is the intersection of the place that she came form and the places that she now occupies.

 

Juror Bios

Alexandra “Rex” Delakaran is a interdisciplinary artist from San Francisco, California. After earning her BFA in Sculpture and Performance Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, she relocated to Washington, DC working in local galleries. She performs and exhibits her work along the coast, working out of Red Dirt Studios, and on curatorial projects of her own.

 

Jaynelle C. Hazard develops, implements and oversees progressive, contemporary programming initiatives in the main gallery spaces at Workhouse Arts Center. In her brief time with the organization, she has implemented over 30 exhibitions with blockbuster shows including: Imagination is the Medium – an exhibit highlighting the works of Jim Henson’s original illustrator, Guy Gilchrist and puppeteer, Bill Diamond; and Compounds Not Required – a group show co-curated with Tiffany Williams from Art in Embassies exploring works of six artists and the origin of metals back to the periodic table.

In previous roles, she has supported various art programs and worked with some of the most celebrated artworks through her experience in managing the corporate contemporary art collection at UBS, the Union Bank of Switzerland, and via her work at Blank Projects, contemporary art gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Significant milestones throughout Hazard’s career include curating lounge installations at Art Basel Miami Beach, administering the production and launch of the publication UBS Art Collection: To Art its Freedom published by Hatje Cantz and in supporting the transition of a historical, promised gift to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jaynelle Hazard recently relocated to Washington from New York where she earned a Master of Arts degree at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Hazard is committed to being an ambassador of cultural heritage and looks forward to continuing the development of rich, inspirational experiences in the community locally and globally.

 

Amy Lokoff is a creative economy catalyst based in Washington, DC. She uses her work to explore inclusive community building, the power of the arts as a tool for social engagement, the value of resource sharing, and financial sustainability for creatives. Over the past 10 years, she has worked with over 250 visual and performing artists and coordinated exhibitions and arts programming in a variety of venues across the DC metropolitan area including Anacostia Arts Center, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Otis Street Arts Project, and Torpedo Factory Art Center. Her exhibitions have been covered in The Washington Post, DCist, 730DC, and East City Art. Amy currently works as the project manager for WRAPture, temporary public art piece addressing climate change by artist and activist Monica Jahan Bose created in collaboration with DC residents and organizations. She also serves as the Visual Arts Curator for Little Salon, a monthly arts event that takes place in intimate spaces around DC.

 

Through the Kitchen Door Installation image

Melanie Kehoss: Through the Kitchen Door 

Through the Kitchen Door presents six household scenes from different eras, spanning 1790 to today, and tells a history of America’s home kitchens. Visitors are invited to peer through screen doors at silhouetted figures preparing meals, to observe the changes over time, and to imagine how the future kitchen may look and function. Visitors may also step into the kitchen of 1953 and become part of the artwork.

To design these scenes, Kehoss used a combination of historical texts, photographs, illustrations, and imagination. She then drew the silhouettes using a grid on black Tyvek (a paper-like plastic) and cut them out with knife and scissors. The cutouts were adhered to white Tyvek sheets and suspended on a wooden structure that Kehoss built for the space.

The New Project Studio is a space for artists to create interactive installations that engage the community. This installation was done in partnership with the Office of the Arts Events & Public Space Activations team and the Torpedo Factory Art Center.

Melanie Kehoss

Raised outside Milwaukee, WI, Melanie Kehoss is an artist and cultural worker living in Arlington, VA. After graduating from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI, she began exploring papercutting as an alternative to digital media. She continued to experiment with cutting approaches as a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, employing craft foam, fleece, and paint swatches. In 2008, Melanie began displaying her papercuts as lightboxes, which remain her signature.

Melanie’s work has appeared in over ninety exhibits throughout the country, and has been featured in solo shows at venues such as Fred Schnider Gallery of Art (Arlington, VA), Blackrock Center for the Arts (Germantown, MD), Hillyer Art Space (Washington DC), and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Ana, CA).

Melanie has lectured at Georgetown University, Carthage College, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. She currently teaches art at Arlington Arts Center and US Arts Center-Chantilly. She manages the Arlington Visual Art Studio Tour and serves on the executive board of the Guild of American Papercutters (GAP).

Headshot by Marlon Crutchfield.

2020 Emerging Artists

Virtual Reception:
Friday, August 14, 2020 | 7 pm
www.facebook.com/torpedofactory

Target Gallery presents 3rd annual exhibition featuring the work of four regional emerging artists. This exhibition spotlights new talent and the up-and-coming artistic innovators of the D.C. metropolitan area.

 

Featured Artists

 

MK Bailey, “Grandma’s Kitchen”, 2019. Oil on Canvas.

MK Bailey, is a Washington, D.C. based artist working primarily in oil paint. Her work explores themes such as femininity, kinship, and death through unexpectedly colorful paintings. Each painting contains layers of imagery that are individually pleasant but collaged together to create a darker narrative. The work featured in this exhibition, take a slightly different approach to presenting the deeper world reference her own feelings of nostalgia encapsulated by a specific thought, memory, or dream. She received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia.

 

 

 

 

Mahsa R. Fard, “Stadium II”, 2019. Acrylic on Canvas.

Mahsa R. Fard,is a painter currently residing in Baltimore, MD. She often paints man-made large scale structures such as cities, stadiums, and apparatuses. She tends to create a new association by introducing unusual color and spatial relationships. Growing up in Iran, she has always been conscious of the dominance of rigid patriarchal gaze both in the public and private sphere. Accessing public and private domains as a female requires subversive strategies. Her imagery reflects a woman’s forced duplicitous roles in these domains. Mahsa contemplates and practice these strategies in her painting and writing through metaphors of censorship, sarcasm, camouflage, cover, and disguise. Mahsa has recently graduated from LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

 

 

 

Zia Palmer, “Richardson Store,” 2019. Photography.

Zia Palmer, is a D.C. metro area based artist focused on graphic design and photography. She received her BFA in photography and minor in graphic design from George Mason University. Zia’s photography practice focuses on historic photographic processes and explores the relationship and liminality between time, memory and place. The artwork featured in this exhibition will explore Zia’s “Las Orillas Del Mundo” series, a project that investigates being Mexican, American, and neither. The work is a compilation of photography, found objects, and family photos. Over the past two years Zia has traveled to specific ghost towns in New Mexico where her grandmother and ancestors were born.  She brings her mother and grandmother with her each time which has served as a way to reconnect to their heritage, some thing that has felt distant from them over time.

 

 

 

Latrelle Rostant, “Closer to the Unimagined”, 2019. Modular loom made of birch plywood, hardware, cotton fiber and metallic.

Latrelle Rostant, is a Maryland-based artist who primarily works with textile and fiber. She has a BFA  from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA at School of Art Institute of Chicago, with a concentration in Fiber and Materials. Through woven textiles, Latrelle explores what it means to be too foreign for the place she comes from, and the spaces she now occupies. Her work embraces the the carnival culture of her native Trinidad and Tobago which has become a space where the culture of those who were bought or came to the island are able make something that reflected, this third place for the new culture they became a part of. Each culture taking their own culture and adapting it to what they encountered when they arrived to the islands. Taking the prompt of adaptation Latrelle has adapted the loom to make objects, that like the artist, do not inherently reflect how they were made. The modular loom she created for this exhibitions, allows her to make woven objects that not only respond to how they are warped on it, but they also respond to what the artist sees as she is weaving on the modular loom. Looking at and understanding how tools, technique, space, and material can be used to make objects that cause  to reflect her own understanding of self. A third place that is the intersection of the place that she came form and the places that she now occupies.

 

Juror Bios

Alexandra “Rex” Delakaran is a interdisciplinary artist from San Francisco, California. After earning her BFA in Sculpture and Performance Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, she relocated to Washington, DC working in local galleries. She performs and exhibits her work along the coast, working out of Red Dirt Studios, and on curatorial projects of her own.

Jaynelle C. Hazard develops, implements and oversees progressive, contemporary programming initiatives in the main gallery spaces at Workhouse Arts Center. In her brief time with the organization, she has implemented over 30 exhibitions with blockbuster shows including: Imagination is the Medium – an exhibit highlighting the works of Jim Henson’s original illustrator, Guy Gilchrist and puppeteer, Bill Diamond; and Compounds Not Required – a group show co-curated with Tiffany Williams from Art in Embassies exploring works of six artists and the origin of metals back to the periodic table.

In previous roles, she has supported various art programs and worked with some of the most celebrated artworks through her experience in managing the corporate contemporary art collection at UBS, the Union Bank of Switzerland, and via her work at Blank Projects, contemporary art gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Significant milestones throughout Hazard’s career include curating lounge installations at Art Basel Miami Beach, administering the production and launch of the publication UBS Art Collection: To Art its Freedom published by Hatje Cantz and in supporting the transition of a historical, promised gift to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jaynelle Hazard recently relocated to Washington from New York where she earned a Master of Arts degree at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Hazard is committed to being an ambassador of cultural heritage and looks forward to continuing the development of rich, inspirational experiences in the community locally and globally.

Amy Lokoff is a creative economy catalyst based in Washington, DC. She uses her work to explore inclusive community building, the power of the arts as a tool for social engagement, the value of resource sharing, and financial sustainability for creatives. Over the past 10 years, she has worked with over 250 visual and performing artists and coordinated exhibitions and arts programming in a variety of venues across the DC metropolitan area including Anacostia Arts Center, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Otis Street Arts Project, and Torpedo Factory Art Center. Her exhibitions have been covered in The Washington Post, DCist, 730DC, and East City Art. Amy currently works as the project manager for WRAPture, temporary public art piece addressing climate change by artist and activist Monica Jahan Bose created in collaboration with DC residents and organizations. She also serves as the Visual Arts Curator for Little Salon, a monthly arts event that takes place in intimate spaces around DC.

 

Image Credit: MK Bailey, Grandma’s Kitchen, 2019. Oil in Canvas.

Late Shift Online: Art & Allies

Join us from the comfort of your own home for an online celebration of new exhibitions, artists, and ideas.

Stop by online for a virtual exhibition tour and talk with Target Gallery Solo Exhibition artist Tai Hwa Goh and an introduction to Post Grad artists Ashley Llanes and Luis A Navas-Reyes. The night culminates with the featured Late Shift event: a special “Art & Allies” conversation with 2018 Post Grad resident artist Lyric Prince, 2016 Post Grad resident Dani Smith, local activist Lexie Gruber, and Adriel Luis, Curator of Digital and Emerging Media at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

 

Schedule of Activities: 

  • 7:00 – 7:05 pm: Introduction
  • 7:05 – 7:20 pm: Target Gallery: Tai Hwa Goh Solo Exhibition Tour and Talk
  • 7:20 – 7:30 pm: Post Grad Residents: Introducing Ashley Llanes and Luis A Navas-Reyes
  • 7:30 – 8:25 pm: Featured Late Shift Talk: “Art & Allies”
  • 8:25 – 8:30 pm: Closing Remarks

 

About the “Art & Allies” Panelists

Lyric Prince

Born and raised in Richmond, VA, Lyric Prince received her B.A. in Fine Arts from Saint Joseph’s University, and has completed a M.S. in Science, Technology, and Society from Drexel University in Philadelphia.  Her practice is project-specific: it includes writing on science and art, crafting digital installations, creating paper sculpture, and completing large-scale drawings/paintings in live settings.  She currently lives and works in Northern Virginia.

 

Dani Smith

Dani was born in Monterey, California, and received her BFA from the California College of the Arts in the California Bay Area and a Masters of Fine Art at The George Washington University in Washington D.C.

Using figurative painting and conceptual portraiture Dani’s studio practice will illustrate examples of modern black female misrepresentations, its various forms of consequences, as well as executions of resistance against prevailing ideologies.

Through personal experiences of racial trauma, Dani hopes she can provide a voice to anyone who has felt marginalized or has been victimized through misrecognition while broadening the space allowed for women of color to define and tell their own stories.

Dani is currently living London, England where she will start Ph.D. program in Visual Culture this fall where she will analyze the extent in which art can be sociologically constructed to ignite a psychological process within art patrons that transforms prejudiced perspectives while concurrently functioning as a tool for social re-conditioning and political protest.

 

Adriel Luis

Adriel Luis is a community organizer, artist, and curator who believes that our collective imagination can make a reality where we all thrive. His life’s work is focused on bridging artistic integrity and social vigilance. He is a part of the iLL-Literacy arts collective, which creates music and media to strengthen Black and Asian American coalitions; is creative director of Bombshelltoe, which works with artists to highlight marginalized communities affected by nuclear issues; and collaborates with dozens of artists and organizations through his curate and design engine, Phenomenoun. Adriel is the Curator of Digital and Emerging Practice at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, where he advocates for under-served communities to be treated and represented equitably by museums and institutions. He and his team has been curating Culture Labs — an alternative to museum exhibitions, built on community-centered beliefs.

Adriel has curated shows at the Smithsonian Arts & Industries Building in Washington, D.C., Silo Park in Auckland, and an abandoned supermarket in Honolulu. His writing has appeared in Poetry Magazine, the Asian American Literary Review, and Smithsonian Magazine. He has spoken at the Tate Modern, Yale University, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the China Academy of Fine Arts. His performance venues include the Brooklyn Academy of Music, SXSW, the John F. Kennedy Center, and the American University of Paris. He has a degree in human sciences from UC Davis in Community and Regional Development, with a focus on ethnic studies.

 

Lexie Gruber

Lexie Gruber is passionate about re-imagining government services that serve as lifelines for Americans. Lexie currently works as a management consultant in the Health and Public Service at Accenture. In this role, she works with government agencies  use modern technology and innovative design practices to improve how the government serves and interacts with citizens. Lexie also serves on the advisory board of Children’s Rights, a national legal organization that works to reform the U.S. foster care system. Outside of work, Lexie is a classical pianist and avid outdoorswoman.

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit: Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

Art in Progress: Kim Sandara

Art in Progress is a weekly public program series highlighting a different artist along with an interview and a demonstration or hands-on project.

Kim Sandara is a queer, Laotian/Vietnamese, artist based in Northern Virginia. In 2016, she graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art, with a BFA in General Fine Arts. At her Torpedo Factory summer 2019 Post-Grad Residency she created a stop motion animation about her parent’s immigration story intersecting her coming out story while also using the studio space as a shop to sell her Tiny Queer Zine collection of stories to fund raise for local and national LGBTQ+ non profits empowering queer youth.

Tune in at 9pm to watch.

 

RSVP to view live

 

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Installation View Tai Hwa Goh

2020 Solo Exhibition: Tai Hwa Goh

Virtual Reception: July 10, 7 pm

Target Gallery is tentatively re-open for public viewing Friday – Sundays. We are closely following the guidelines for Virginia’s COVID-19 re-opening phases. Schedule subject to change. Target Gallery will be closed, Saturday, July 4 in observance of Independence Day.

View virtual exhibition catalog here (online and pdf version available)
Exhibition Catalogs

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.

“The use of printmaking and paper shapes is challenging and requires skill to help the viewer to make the visual leap from natural to artificial. The uniqueness of the materials and their construction are in themselves engaging and lead the viewers into unusual visual experiences,” said Russell.

Tai Hwa Goh runs through Sunday, July 26, 2020 in Target Gallery, located in Studio 2. There will be a virtual reception via facebook.com/targetgallery on Friday, July 10, at 7 p.m., with an in-depth walk-through video tour by the artist.

Tai Hwa Goh Virtual Exhibition Tour 

Tai Hwa Goh Virtual Tour Script

Tai Hwa Goh’s DIY Home Art Installation Project

https://www.facebook.com/TargetGallery/posts/10158303368314321

 

About the Artist 

Tai Hwa Goh is a Korean-born artist who primarily works with printmaking and paper installation. Goh received a MFA degree at the University of Maryland specializing in printmaking and sculpture. She also received a MFA in printmaking at Seoul National University in Korea.

She built a strong career as a professional artist and a lecturer in Washington D.C. area during 2000-2007. She actively interacted with local artists and gallery curators to explore new idea of merging printmaking with sculpture.

She moved to New York Metropolitan area in 2007, and continued to present her art works in numerous shows. Her exhibitions including Wave Hill, William Paterson University, IPCNY, DUMBO Art Festival, Islip Museum , Gallery Aferro, AIR Gallery, Snug Harbor Center for The Art  and many more, have been highlighted in the local media and art community. In the mean time, she has also invited to have exhibitions in D.C. area, including Johns Hopkins University, Flashpoint Gallery, and Korean Cultural Center.

She has been awarded grants and residencies from Museum of Art and Design, Lower East Side Print Shop, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Aljira A Center for Contemporary Art, and Vermont Studio Center, to name a few.

 

 

 

ALX Pride Special Event: “UHAULED” Online Conversation

ALX Pride was developed in 2018 as a community-focused event to celebrate LGBTQ+-identifying creatives in the Alexandria area and beyond. Although this year’s in-person Pride Late Shift event is canceled due to COVID-19, the Art Center will host a virtual conversation on the same evening in the comfort of your home.

UHAULED is a Queer gallery that highlights and centers the work and experience of Queer and lesbian artists. Created and curated by Cat Baker, and with two installations and counting, UHAULED is [typically] a one night pop up gallery which displays the art of several rotational artists in multiple U-Haul trucks. UHAULED was created in response to the lack of space allotted to those in the queer community who aren’t cis men, coupled with the need and importance to highlight queer artists in a typically hetero heavy space.

Join curator Cat Baker as she moderates a panel featuring three UHAULED artists – Nava Levenson, Koren Grace, and Arielle Eisen – for a conversation centered on the pop up gallery project, the impact LGBTQ+ artists have made in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area, and where each of the panelists believe things will go from here.

 

Nava Levenson

Nava Levenson is a multidisciplinary artist, organizer, and collaborator based out of Richmond, VA. In the form of installations, gatherings, and collection, her work investigates anthropological concepts such as hospitality, labor consumption, and domestic ecology. Nava has been a resident at Torpedo Factory Art Center (Alexandria, VA) and Elsewhere Museum (Greensboro, NC). Recent exhibitions/happenings include UHAULED at Norfolk Neon Fest and A Jar Opening at Rhizome DC (Washington). Nava is the recipient of an Anything Art Grant from Specto Artspace (Bridgewater, VA) and a CVPA Research Grant at James Madison University where she received her BFA in Sculpture. Currently her work deals in curating, material reuse and gendered labor as it relates to construction and homesteading.

Koren Grace

Virginia is home to innovators, creators, and lovers. So, it’s no surprise that diverse seeds planted by cultivators, ranging from hip-hop reformists (Pharrell, Missy Elliott, Timbaland) to jazz legends (Ella Fitzgerald), would continue to produce organic talent by the masses. Norfolk artist Koren Grace is no exception. Hailing from the 757, the singer/songwriter has been writing and performing music since 2008 with 3 EPs and a single, features, and performances at local festivals such as Shaggfest, Soulflower, and the Chipokke festival. And true to the Virginia spirit, Koren Grace doesn’t narrow her music down to one specific sound—she rather let the music speak for itself. -Written by Jasmine Rodriguez

Arielle Eisen

Arielle Eisen is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Richmond, VA working in sculpture, performance, and writing. They are a recent BFA graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design’s Glass program. Arielle believes that sensations can unite the psyche and the body, or disconnect it; their work aims to unite their psyche and physical form. They hope to be a mirror; to invite others to reflect on themselves.

 

Cat Baker

Cat Baker is a multimedia artist whose work focuses primarily on Queer Identity, the Exploration of the Form and Self, and incorporates themes from her childhood growing up in the Chesapeake Bay. Cat received a BFA in Photography from Radford University, and has since been featured in several exhibitions in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and currently resides in Washington DC. She is the curator of  UHAULED, a queer, pop up exhibit which features the works of several queer artists, rotating on an installation by installation basis.