Introduction
With Feminism, Coding and Toxic Paints, we open our second virtual student exhibition on Scalar. The show was originally scheduled for spring 2020 and postponed to the beginning of the fall semester in hopes that by then campus would be open again and we would be able to install the show in our gallery. By now the juniors of 2020 have become the seniors of 2021 and are involved in committee work and preparation of their thesis exhibitions this coming spring. The works in this show having been slated to be shown last schoolyear had been ready for some time and in a young artists career what was created a semester ago can already be considered ‘old work’. And so, it is with a great sigh of relief that this long-anticipated show is finally live. Notwithstanding the long drumroll, the projects we see on this page bear witness to the resilient creativity and determination of the four artists, Olivia Collins, Nicole Daskas, Morgan Grimes and Alyssa Tucker. The title of the show Feminism, Coding and Toxic Paints plays on the themes the four employ in their works. I want to briefly introduce the works before the artists themselves will do so in greater detail on the following pages.
Olivia Collins and Nicole Daskas put forth feminist concerns in referencing history and reclaiming recognition for female leaders and asserting an inclusive women’s rights activism and anti-oppressive society. In her series of celebratory large-scale mixed media paintings titled Tapestries Olivia Collins elevates a diverse selection of women to acknowledgement using art historically specifically male styles of image production. An Asian, a European and an African female leader are the topics and inspirations of her work in which she constructs portraits referencing art nouveau and tarot cards, restoring the individual from depiction as an object of the male gaze to subjects that claim their rightful historical recognition. Nicole Daskas points out the exclusivity of a feminist art history that is predominantly concerned with the white upper class and inserts her own personality as an Asian American feminist artist. Utilizing flowers as the thematic connection between the individual segments her unsettling three-channel piece Pretty Little Flower examines stereotypical views and expectations of women and constitutes at the same time a salutation, a critical comment and an expansion on the history of feminist art.
Morgan Grimes and Alyssa Tucker investigate technological aspects of different eras of art production. Morgan Grimes explores the history of the medium of oil paint and the use of toxic pigments in the past and in some cases until this day. The series of black and white conceptual paintings titled A Brush with Death are replica of highly recognizable classical works showing color only where the respective toxic paint was applied. Her work points at how the physicality of the medium creates the working conditions for an artist and how this can in a very literal sense influence the course of an artist’s life by affecting their health - in a forensic maneuver the paintings make the hidden conditions of the creation of the originals visible. Alyssa Tucker’s playful experimentation engages with past and modern technology and she weaves her multiple interests from coding to cosplay into the fabric of her work (pun intended). In her piece Digital Style she combines the ancient craft of sewing with the current technology of 3-D-printing to create a garment that is a hybrid of both technologies. The motifs for the printed parts are derived from the artist’s sketch book and drawings made over the last year, creating a wearable diary, an autobiographic costume. In a further step, as someone who exists to a great extend online, and inserts their personality into the digital, in a reverse move she makes the digital tangible to our senses.
We hope you enjoy the show and come back many times to see the works.
Marcus Herse
Guggenheim Gallery Coordinator