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FOUR WASHINGTON, DC AREA SCHOOLS COLLABORATE IN AN EXHIBITION OF STUDENT WORK IN RESPONSE TO THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACK AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

FAIRFAX, VA -- Coordinated by Paula Crawford, David Chung, and Tom Ashcraft, George Mason University, Art & Visual Technology Department, RESPONSE, an exhibition of art organized as a collective reaction to the September 11th attack on New York and Washington, brings together student work from four schools in the Washington, DC area. The exhibition was produced in collaboration with the Corcoran College of Art & Design and the art departments of Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Maryland at College Park.

As Guest Curators to the gallery program, Paula Crawford and David Chung were in the process of preparing an exhibition of painting when the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington occurred. Afterwards -- in direct response to the profoundly changed world view reflected in the campus environment -- the exhibition was rethought and reorganized.

Tom Ashcraft joined the curatorial team. Other area schools were contacted, and Kendall Buster of the Corcoran College of Art and Design, John Ruppert of the University of Maryland at College Park, and Elizabeth King of Virginia Commonwealth University helped to coordinate the exhibition.

"As art is informed by its historical context, so too may be its producers," Paula Crawford states in the exhibition documentation. "Many of the young artists participating in Response were born into the decadent eighties, children during the Gulf (television) War, and came of age in the prosperous nineties, an Alexandrine period whose established art was often marked by the overblown presentation of trivial content. Bemoaned by some professors and critics for their comfortable affinity with banality and ennui, they have been praised by others as quintessentially postmodern. Indeed it may be that these seemingly contradictory assessments belong to the times themselves, which this generation of artists honestly expresses and documents."

Among the works in Response, some reflect altered perceptions in their creative process. For instance, Tacie Jone's seven foot high painting of a firefighter was begun earlier this year as a portrait of a working man. Informed by the events of September 11, the worker was transformed into a heroic firefighter.

Some layer elements of danger in symbols previously differently perceived. For instance, Justin Barrows' and Matthew Sutton's installation of hundreds of white paper airplanes might have been reminiscent of Reiko Goto's 1989 installation of hundreds of white origami cranes, but in Post September 11, the impact is ominously different -- as is the impact of the small dishes of innocuous white powders, such as cornstarch and salt, which Mark Stark places on the floor in his installation with the (appropriated from Malevich) title WHITE ON WHITE. Aline Shkurovich's sound work USEFUL DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS is a tape recorded reading of the dictionary definitions of recontextualized words, such as "airplane" and "terrorist".

Some works in the exhibition are a direct, personal response to the destruction and murders. Robert Adam Malin's drawing NOETH is described as "a tender portrait of a friend lost in the Pentagon. At first glance, it appears a simple drawing in brown ink. But in fact, it's drawn in blood, oxidized into brown on white paper."

"Other artists explore the metonymic as it relates to the poignantly material," curator Paula Crawford notes. "Brandon Campbell's Gas Mask, a sculpture heavily constructed of steel and leather, speaks to recent fears of chemical war attack. At the same time it links them to an image from the Gulf War, made ubiquitous by Isaac Stern's gas masked violin performance in Israel during a scud missile attack, and later revisited by Ida Applebroog in a painting. In a similar vein, Steve Elliott's Recoil, an aluminum plate shot over and over with bullets, becomes a quiet argument for the pointlessness and repetitiousness of violence and war."

Response is at the Fine Arts Gallery and Johnson Center Gallery, George Mason University through December 21, 2001. Not only does the exhibition serve as a focal point of artist response on these campuses located in the vicinity of the Nation's capitol, but also it invokes discussion and an awareness of changed perception on these campuses.

"There are as many responses as there are artists in the exhibition. They are the beginning of a still forming discussion, which articulates a reconfigured collective identity and the struggle of individual young artists to find their voices within it," Paula Crawford states.

Sources/resources:

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY -- http://www.gmu.edu
Paula Crawford , Assistant Professor; Associate Chair, Coordinator of Painting & Drawing; (703) 993-8823; pcrawfo1@gmu.edu

The artists in the show are:
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY: Siegfried Bruner, Brandon Campbell Matthew Cain, Patricia Cassidy, Rebecca Chase, Hathaivong Chunchumnein, Jack Crowley, Andrew Stubbs Johnston, Tacie Jones, Judy Kim, Heather MacDonald, Jim McLean, Peter Petrine, and Huda Totonji
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: Virginia Arrisueno, Bonnie Crawford Steve Elliott, Brandon Friend, Ben Piwowar, Mark Stark
CORCORAN COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN: Olivia Allamand, Noah Angell, Justin Barrows & Matthew Sutton, Breck Bronson, Breck Bronson & Dan Wilke, Claude Burgett, Amanda Champ, Reniel Diaz and Jennifer Page, Robert Adam Malin, Aline Shkurovich
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY: Fumi Sato, Nasar Al-Rifafi, Bill Shively, Frank Lortscher

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