ASG – SFAI MFA Highlights
Srimongkol Darawali, Kunlin He, Becca Levine, Nicholas Makanna, Soraya Sharghi
August 3 – September 1, 2016
Andrea Schwartz Gallery is pleased to exhibit a selection of this year’s Master of Fine Arts graduating class from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Andrea Schwartz, an alum from SFAI, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977. After attending the 2016 Graduate Exhibition, Andrea and her partner, Steve Dolan, were motivated to select five artists to represent the program in a group show, as a way to provide more exposure for their work. ASG will host a panel discussion What Now? on August 18th, to further assist in providing graduates with more information on how to prepare for the next step.
There is no single organizing theme behind the exhibition, each artist breathes a new sense of possibility within their unique practices. The artist’s featured are Srimongkol Darawali, Kunlin He, Becca Levine, Nicholas Makanna, and Soraya Sharghi.
Srimongkol Darawali, Kunlin He, Becca Levine, Nicholas Makanna, Soraya Sharghi
August 3 – September 1, 2016
Andrea Schwartz Gallery is pleased to exhibit a selection of this year’s Master of Fine Arts graduating class from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Andrea Schwartz, an alum from SFAI, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977. After attending the 2016 Graduate Exhibition, Andrea and her partner, Steve Dolan, were motivated to select five artists to represent the program in a group show, as a way to provide more exposure for their work. ASG will host a panel discussion What Now? on August 18th, to further assist in providing graduates with more information on how to prepare for the next step.
There is no single organizing theme behind the exhibition, each artist breathes a new sense of possibility within their unique practices. The artist’s featured are Srimongkol Darawali, Kunlin He, Becca Levine, Nicholas Makanna, and Soraya Sharghi.
Srimongkol Darawali paints with acrylic on fiber tape over canvas. Darawali’s intentions are to visually reflect his response to sound and silence as experienced through music. Music and sound influence his process and ideas, as well as serve as key points of reference for the viewer. The paintings, in general, are constructed by adapting musical structures, such as the ‘sonata-form’, a type of composition in which two themes or subjects are explored, along with other variations.
Kunlin He, along with receiving his MFA, is a classically trained artist in the Chinese tradition of painting and calligraphy. Like in Eastern traditions, He does not differentiate painting and drawing, instead he employs the two mediums dually. He will be exhibiting a 4 panel series called “Painting 30 Days”. During this period of time, He watched three popular CNN TV shows and appropriated the images, adding a new image to the different panels each day, painting on top of the addition from the previous day.
Becca Levine negotiates with raw materials such as annealed wire and recycled tire soaker tubing to give recognition to overlooked and nontraditional mediums. These utilitarian materials are transformed into dysfunctional, abstract forms through efficient and endurance-based processes while she repeats “feminine” gestures such as weaving and crocheting that defy the initial industrial function of these materials.
Nicholas Makanna’s paintings and ceramics are based on the creation of new ruins as a means to explore an understanding of place in relation to the shifting physical landscape of San Francisco. Abstracted interpretations of previous structures begin to populate an alternative reality within his paintings done with oil and spray paint on canvas. Makanna’s glazed ceramic sculptures also embody similar elements, building a world of dilapidated and collapsing forms.
Soraya Sharghi’s art challenges various portrayals of the Middle East and common representations of orientalism. She often draws on childhood memories to understand the formation of her adult identity and translates it to more universal human experience that crosses cultural boundaries. The iconography within her work focuses on the intersection between reality and fantasy. Her art confronts religion, politics, and gender.
