Strategic acts of seeing and knowing, and not

About

Strategic acts of seeing and knowing, and not

participating artists

Juan Arata
Sarah Dale
Louise Gibson
Elin Ryd
Samantha Sethi
Madeline Stillwell

Organized by Hilbert Raum member Andy Holtin, this exhibition brings together three Berlin-based artists and three visitors. Though the forms that the works of these six artists take are varied, they share a core strategy of artwork as inquiry, a curiosity about cause and effect in the systems of the world that works itself out in the studio. They also share a willingness, or maybe a need, to overlap media and processes in the pursuit of their inquiries, letting the nature of the query at hand set the terms of each work’s presence in the world. Together their works present a spectrum of hypotheses and tests, ends and means, and worries and desires.

This exhibition has grown out of the activities of American University’s graduate summer program, MFASTUDIOBERLIN. The Berlin-based artists, Madeline Stillwell, Juan Arata, and Louise Gibson, have, along with many others, opened their studios to and shared their time with the members of the program. Each was asked to select one member of this summer’s program to participate with them in this exhibition. The selected artists from the program are Sarah Dale, Elin Ryd, and Samantha Sethi.

Originating from Scotland, Louise Gibson graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009 and in 2013 relocated her studio to Berlin. She is currently on a long-term private residency placement in a metal recycling yard on the outskirts of the city in Lichtenberg. Exhibiting mainly in Europe, Gibson's activities include The Grove Artistic bursary (London) where she was commissioned to create a public sculpture to coincide with 2012 The Olympic Games, nomination for the berlin art prize 2014 and a runner up for the Warsteiner Blooom Award 2014 (ART FAIR cologne), and an exhibition with the Rebel Angels in Venice, a independent group show currently running at The Venice Biennale 2015.

Juan Arata, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina is a multimedia artist living in Berlin who works in the fields of installation, video, sculpture, writing and painting. He sometimes performs and acts as curator of self developed projects, which usually involves a networking mode of work or cooperation. His work is most centered in history and its most outstanding makers, not because of their merits, but for the position they represent in time, as inflector vectors of repetition. Through his artworks, Arata studies the different paradigms which shaped our actual state of mind and its consequent life structure.

Madeline Stillwell, originally from the USA, received her Master’s of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2008). Her work has been performed & exhibited at events and venues including the Kassel Kultur project of dokumenta 13, the Berlin Biennale 7, as well as Wilde Gallery and Kunstverein Göttingen. Her work is included in private and public collections such as the Deutsche Bank Collection (Amsterdam), RCK Kunststiffung Collection (Berlin), Stoffel/Young Collection (New York), and Janet Oh Collection (Seoul). Since 2009 she has been teaching Performance as part of the Theater Education Program at the Evangelische Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit, Berlin.

Sarah Dale, b. USA, is an interdisciplinary artist based in Washington, DC, USA. Most of her work centers around two of her concerns – keeping her artist carbon footprint to a minimum by finding unusual materials/processes to create, and giving a voice to the voiceless, namely among one group to which she belongs, spouses of combat veterans. Most recently she's shown her work at Healing Arts Gallery, Katzen Arts Center, Off Rhode Gallery and Gallery 102. She holds a BFA from the University of Central Missouri and is currently a degree candidate in the American University MFA program in Washington, DC.

Elin Ryd, a Swedish native of Hong Kong, recently completed degrees in Studio Art and Psychology at American University. Her interest in materials and tools combines with her interests in social systems, rituals, and everyday performance to produce objects and installations that imply an unconventional anthropology.

Samantha Sethi, b. USA, received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and is currently a degree candidate in the American University MFA program in Washington, DC. Samantha has shown in NYC and DC as well as nationally. Her work has appeared in several publications, including Time Out New York and Studio Visit Magazine. Samantha has been awarded the Morris Louis fellowship as well as the Patricia Moore Segnan award. Her work was most recently featured in the Washington Project for the Arts Hothouse exhibition series.

curated by Andy Holtin