Interior Landscapes
31°19’19.10”N; 109°29’47.62”W: And Golden Light, 2017, video still, courtesy of Bockley Gallery
POSTCOMMODITY ERIC PAUL-RIEGE
M. JENEA SANCHEZ TARA EVONNE TRUDELL
INTERIOR LANDSCAPES
JANUARY 26 – FEBRUARY 23, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 26th 6-9pm
Performances: Opening night 7pm and February 23rd 7pm
Interior Landscapes is an exhibition presented by Sanitary Tortilla Factory and 516 ARTS as part of a collaboration for “The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility”. Interior Landscapes co-curated by Daryl Lucero and sheri crider. The exhibition focus is on the lived experience of people on the U.S.-Mexico border. Elemental to these stories are the absence of political demarcations. Where the border suggests a bifurcation of territoriality, there also exists the space between the north and south.
The artists in this exhibit find themselves living in varying proximities with the border—Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora. Although the artists vary in social, cultural, and geographical distances, the work engages communities situated on the border. The works are collaborative and signify the reciprocal nature in which borders can be negotiated, and recreated to benefit those within them.
The works are examples of socially engaged art that humanize the border wall and its symbol of national identity, culture, and politics. And what we see are the acts that speak to living in a place of tension, violence, and creativity. The border becomes possessed by the humanity of those within it. What we witness are the stories, experiences, and truths not of the artists, but through the medium of conversation between the artists and communities. We witness the creativity of people and place.
In Border Tapestry (2009) M. Jenea Sanchez teases the absence of the border wall by transforming its purpose to divide and uses it to unite. Sanchez utilizes the steel structure as a loom to weave, to recall and connect to the “familial roots of the border communities, the families that are separated by the fence, and the days when movement across was more fluid and natural rather than militarized.”
Tara Evonne Trudell’s work physically transforms the words and messages of those living within the border area. Tara Evonne Trudell hosts poetry workshops with communities situated on the border. In these workshops, participants create poems that are then created into beads which become long strands of poetry. Tara Evonne Trudell see this work as a way to “address the realities of trying to cross the border: a trip plagued with dangerous environments and a heavily militarized zone.”
From the outside looking in, the border can be flat and two-dimensional. These works bring to light the life within. The border is animated, mocked, teased, and made human.
Click here to read the exhibition brochure
Thank you to 516 ARTS for making this exhibition possible.
516 ARTS US-Mexico Boarder Program Guide
Pre-existing Conditions
Cecilia McKinnon and Lance McGoldrick.
December 15, 2017 – January 19, 2018
Opening reception Dec. 15, 6-9pm
“Pre-existing Conditions” is the result of a collaborative excavation of various illegal dump sites near Albuquerque. Cecilia McKinnon and Lance McGoldrick have sourced materials for installation, sculptures, and trash readymades from these informal sites, examining cycles of production, consumption, and planned obsolescence. The artists give consideration and new context to common trash, attempting to present waste objects as both repellent and beautiful.
The two artists, both redheads, share a common background in printmaking as well as a love of working with messy, often decaying materials. The artists share a mutual fascination with objects which are broken and abandoned, and with repurposing found objects and materials within sculptural practices. Cecilia McKinnon, an active member of GRAFT collective, is an intermedia artist and curator, interested in textiles, installation, and performance. Lance Ryan McGoldrick, an artist with Meow Wolf collective, is based in Albuquerque, NM. Working both solo and in collaboration, Lance’s work often takes on an architectural scale and has frequently been presented in non-traditional art spaces.
Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Award Recipients
Congratulations to University of New Mexico MFA Candidate’s Kaitlin Bryson and Nick Simko on receiving Sanitary Tortilla Factory’s Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Award! The Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series (E.V.A.S.S.) offers professional space for two Master of Fine Art graduate students per year as their final thesis show. The culminating exhibition launches them into their profession as an artist. With the series, we underscore exceptional artists attending regional institutions while highlighting Albuquerque’s innovative contemporary art scene.
Kaitlin Bryson lives and works in the high deserts of New Mexico, and has spent her life working as an artist and organic farmer. Drawing from her experience as a cultivator, her artwork illuminates the processual nature of life through the lens of transformation. Biological materials are embedded into her work so that the “finished” pieces have the potential to play, transform, and live out their own dynamic processes. Her work unfolds as restorative gestures for human and nonhuman audiences, serving as a reminder that mutability and adaptability are the common grounds we all inhabit.
Bryson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Nevada, Reno in 2012, and is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Art & Ecology from the University of New Mexico. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at The Holland Project in Reno, Nevada, Site Santa Fe, and BioCultura in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has been performed at The Holocene in Portland, Oregon. In January of 2018 Bryson will participate in the Interface Residency Programme in Gallway, Ireland, supported by funding in part from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation.
Nick Simko is an interdisciplinary artist. Simko’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the United States including the Walters Art Museum, The University of New Mexico Art Museum, 516 Arts, and Hillyer Arts Space. Simko holds a BFA degree in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is presently completing an MFA in Photography at the University of New Mexico.
In my studio practice I am interested in material process and the formation of identity. My work employs a variety of material techniques, blending digital imaging, drawing, and monumental tapestries woven on a computerized loom. Though my work is often grounded in imagery from the history of painting and photography, I am equally inspired by contemporary cultural artifacts such as music videos and animated sitcoms. My work often balances on a tightrope between two opposing cliffs: the serious and the silly, the sacred and the profane, the awful and the awesome. I am most interested in the slippage that occurs between approaches and how such fluidity challenges processes of identification.
https://www.nickcliffordsimko.com/
We Appreciate Your Progress
For As Long As We Could Hold Our Breath, Eugene Ellenberg, 2017, Archival Inkjet Print
November 10th – 24th, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, November 10th, 6-9pm
In an exhibition of interdisciplinary works, Eugene Ellenberg explores human limitations and the exquisite nature of failure. Communal phrases of promise and codes of distress coexist and contrast the artist’s own fractured faith and embrace of doubt. In a series of photographs, Ellenberg contends with self-conscious rituals in moments of reverence by exposing each sheet of film for as long as he held his breath. Accompanying installations repurpose industrial materials, inviting the visitor to engage with their own presence and sensorial experience in the space.
Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series
We Appreciate Your Progress, new works by Eugene Ellenberg is one of two exhibitions in the 2017 that is part of Sanitary Tortilla Factory’s Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series. The Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series offers professional space for the culminating exhibition that defines the student’s launch into their profession as an artist. The series hopes to underscore exceptional artists attending regional institutions while highlighting Albuquerque’s historic connection to contemporary art practice.
About the Artist
Eugene Ellenberg is an interdisciplinary artist working in Albuquerque, NM. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Harry Wood Gallery in Tempe, AZ, Lionel Rombach Gallery in Tucson, AZ, Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA, Lee Gallery in Clemson, SC, College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, CO, Clinton Adams Gallery and 516 Arts in Albuquerque, NM. His work has been published online through Ain’t Bad, Lenscratch, Slate Magazine, CNN World and One, One Thousand Southern Photography. He is a recipient of the Howard L. Franks Memorial Fellowship. Originally from South Carolina, he received his BFA in Studio Art from Clemson University. As one of Sanitary Tortilla Factory’s Exceptional Scholars of 2017, We Appreciate Your Progress is his MFA thesis show for the Photography program at the University of New Mexico.
The Alchemical Trace: Transformation and Resilience in Recent Work by LGBTQIA Artists
“Earl”, Earl McBride, 48×36″ 2016, courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery
October 6th-November 3rd, 2017
Opening Reception: October 6th, 6-9pm
Curated by art historian, Ray Hernández-Durán, The Alchemical Trace: Transformation and Resilience in Recent Work by LGBTQIA Artists is an exhibition meant to open in conjunction with the 15th annual Southwest Gay Lesbian Film Festival, the largest event of its kind in this region of the country. With a focus on resistance, adaptation, and survival, the exhibition will include recent work by a diverse group of emerging LGBTQIA-identified artists from NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., Las Vegas, and Albuquerque, who address themes of healing, growth, memory, and persistence in their art. In addition to the exhibition, there will be a lecture series, art film screenings, and an exhibition catalogue that will be free to the public.
feat. Logan Bellew, Justin Favela, Pilar Gallego, Erol Scott Harris II, Earl McBride, Maia Cruz Palileo, Virgo Paraiso, Jami Porter Lara, Tino Rodriguez, Nick Simko, Jason Villegas.
The Alchemical Trace: Transformation and Resilience in Recent Work by LGBTQIA Artists is generously supported by the Fulcrum Fund in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
