“Code Switch” Exhibition

Ortega y Gasset Projects @ The Old American Can Factory

[Image: Mark Martinez "Craving Inclusion Does Not Mean Sacrificing one's self" (2017) 48 x 32 in. acrylic and charcoal on t-shirt (from ongoing splayed T-shirt series)]

This event has ended.

Ortega y Gasset Projects presents Code Switch curated by Lauren Whearty and Clare Britt. Code Switching is a linguistic term, defined by one who can go back and forth between two languages. In popular culture it has expanded to include social and identity based behaviors which may alter based on situational necessity, or proprietary cues. Code Switch will be an exhibition of 5 artists: Joeun Aatchim, Minhee Bee, Christy Chan, Alexis Granwell, and Mark Martinez, who use this multiplicity in their own visual language. This invented language comes from working through and within a variety of combinations, which come together to form a new whole. The trained and intuitive ability to shift between language and culture is imperative to artworks which dig into complex subjects ranging from identity to intimacy, navigating our contemporary existence, power and politics.

Artists:

Joeun Aatchim crafts a visual form of writing borrowed from the literary diction in Essayism. To gratify her agonizing yearn for crafting intangible “coincidences” as her core medium, she vigorously, yet steadily, executes multimedia craft, such as mosaics, ceramics, drawing, fresco, and printmaking, as proxies. In her artist talk performance with dubbing and ventriloquism, she illogically recounts the relationship between the artist and his/her work, provoking queries about authorship, disembodiment, and the sincerity of voice. She received her BFA in Studio Art from New York University, MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University in the City of New York and attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in class of 2017. Currently, she is working on her never-ending manuscript, Four (of) Mattresses Stacked on Misery.

Minhee Bae is an artist whose textile practice utilizes contemporary signs and symbols, DIY feminist techniques, and a quiet sense of humor to negotiate the landscapes of identity, language, heritage, and desire. She was a resident at the Wassiac Artist Residency in 2016 and has recently exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, and Toronto. She received a BA from University of Toronto and an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design. She is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

Christy Chan is an artist and filmmaker based in Oakland, California. Her narrative films, videos, performances and installations have been exhibited at venues including Southern Exposure, The Kala Art Institute, SOMArts, Root Division, the Los Angeles Film Festival Shorts Series, and in storytelling venues such as NPR. She has been awarded residencies and support from Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, The Wassaic Project, Kala Art Institute, and Real Time and Space, among others. Chan holds an M.A. in Communication Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University and a B.A. in English from Old Dominion University. She is currently a 2017- 2018 Fellow at The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Alexis Granwell received an MFA from The University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from Boston University. Granwell is a recipient of The Independence Foundation Fine Arts Fellowship Grant. She is a co-director and one of the founding members of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, an artist collective, in Philadelphia. She most recently exhibited her work in a three-person show at Fleisher/ Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. She has exhibited many solo exhibitions across the country, including at ; Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA; Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, CT; Towson University, Baltimore, MD; and Bryan Miller Gallery, Houston, TX. Other recent group exhibitions include Field Projects, New NY; Select Art Fair, New York, NY, IPCNY, NY; Artist-Run, Miami, FL, Momenta Art, New York, NY; Trestle Art Gallery, New York, NY; Elephant, Los Angeles, CA; Hemphill Gallery, Washington DC; PrattMWP Art Museum, Utica, NY; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; SOIL, Seattle, WA; and CTRL Gallery, Houston, TX.

Mark C Martinez is a mixed-media artist that makes paintings, objects, photo based works and installation work. His work engages with issues related to identity (more specifically his own) using history/origin, invented persona and carefully arranged systems to question and challenge the notion of identity. Mark works and lives in New York. He received his M.F.A. in 2014 from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. Mark’s work has been shown predominately in Philadelphia and this group show will be his first time showing in New York.

This exhibition was Co Curated by:

Lauren Whearty is a painter who lives and works in Philadelphia, Pa. Lauren received her MFA in painting from The Ohio State University where she received a Graduate Teaching Associate Award, an Arts and Humanities Research Grant, and was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. She received her BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, with honors. While attending Tyler, Lauren received the Ellen Battell Stoeckel fellowship to attend Yale’s Summer School of Art residency in Norfolk, CT. She has attended Vermont Studio Center with a fellowship, and has exhibited at such venues as the Woodmere Museum of Art in Philadelphia, The Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia, Vox Populi, Satellite Contemporary. Lauren has taught at, The Ohio State University, Tyler’s Continuing Education program,Moore College of Art and Design continuing education program, and PAFA museum workshops, and Hussian College of Art.

Clare Britt is a photographer living and making in Chicago, IL. Her work explores themes about materiality and form deconstructing photographic images and making layers of found images to create sculptural collages. She also uses light as subject and found objects in space to transform ordinary places for site specific installations. She founded the Nonprofit Arts Organization Fraction Workspace in Chicago, IL (2003-2007). She graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a Masters in Fine Arts (2008). She is a freelance photographer traveling the country documenting various projects that include the Friedman House assisted living facility for the visually impaired and One Tail at a Time no kill dog rescue Center.