PRAXIS/POIESIS is curated by Reid Addison Bingham and Jen Sohn-Park as part of the Collaborative Arts Gall3ry series. Gall3ry is designed to give emerging artists and curators the opportunity to produce their own exhibitions under the guidance of Collaborative Arts’ artistic leadership. The curator is guided through the process of refining an exhibition idea, contacting artists, developing materials about the artist and organizing an opening reception. The curator then further develops the exhibition thematically by advising artists on selection and organization of their works for presentation.
Praxis/Poiesis features the work of artists Ariana G. Barat, Alexander B. Conner, Olivia Kaufman-Rovira, and Matthew West. By showing a short retrospective of each artist’s work, this exhibition hopes to highlight how investigations into new technologies, materials, and ideas have influenced the artists’ Praxes.
Ariana G. Barat is currently pursuing her B.F.A. at Mason Gross School of the Arts, with a minor in French Language at Rutgers University. She has previously studied at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in Pont-Aven, France, worked at the Glasgow Print Studio in Glasgow, Scotland, and interned at the Lower East Side Printshop in New York City. Her work explores the psychology of time perception by utilizing imagery that speaks to the genre of problems, uncovered in such narratives relating to time, issues of interiority and exteriority, absence, presence, transcendence, and the partiality of perspective. She depicts life as a dream whose shapes return due to the never-ceasing strain of thought and consciousness. myarugula@aol.com
Alexander B. Conner is an artist living and working in Philadelphia and a 2008 graduate of Rutgers College with a dual-degree in Sociology and Middle Eastern Studies. Conner began his artistic practice independent of any formal art institutions. His works document and filter the dense milieus of social interactions in urban environments as it relates to his examinations of psychological space. Currently focusing on photography and painting, he has worked with other diverse mediums such as crochet, plaster casting, mail art, and MS Dos. His works have been exhibited in New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. His website is http://surnameconner.blogspot.com/ and can be contacted at alexanderbconner@gmail.com.
Olivia Kaufman-Rovira, a sculptor and printmaker, graduated Summa Cum Laude from Mason Gross School of the Arts in 2006 where she was awarded the James Dickinson Carr Scholarship – a four-year full academic scholarship. Her work ranges from large-scale installations involving ceramics and grass, to handmade paper sculptures that focus on the interplay between light and shadow. After studying in Barcelona at the international contemporary art workshop Metáfora, she has begun to incorporate plastics and other recyclable materials into her work. Her website is http://oliviakaufman.com. She can be reached at oliviakaufman@gmail.com.
Matthew West is a resident New Jersey artist, born and raised in South Dakota. Matthew West creates sculptures and installations that range from the realistic depictions of buffalos and automobiles, to large-scale works of abstract minimalism. West creates his own vernacular of images, symbols, and investigations of form drawn from his experiences growing up in South Dakota. He uses media as diverse as paper, clay, and computer animation. He has shown work in New Jersey and abroad in Germany, and currently works for the Matrix Art Collective where he resides in Jersey City. His website is http://westieinc.com. He can be reached at westieinc@mac.com.
Jen Sohn-Park is a recent visual arts graduate of Mason Gross School of the Arts. Her focus in media spans from photography, videos, and illustration, to mixed-media collages. Through her work she concentrates on transformative possibilities, rearranging so-called “set” constructs, issues of control, and the battle between self-determination vs. destiny and chance. She has previously participated as an artist in coLAB Arts’ Resonate series, shown work at the Seed Gallery in Newark, New Jersey, studied and worked in Puerto Limón, Costa Rica, and was a curator for the Alfa Art Gallery in September 2008. In addition to her work as an artist, Sohn-Park was an active organizer of art happenings throughout New Brunswick including This Town Needs A Parade (now in its fourth year), is a coLAB Arts visual arts producer, and currently resides in Central New Jersey. Her wesbite is http://jensohnpark.com. She can be reached at penjark@gmail.com.
Reid Addison Bingham is an electronics and video artist currently based in New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers College in 2007 with a B.A in the arts, spending most of his time making short video pieces and circuit bending. Bingham has performed and exhibited throughout Philadelphia, Washington D.C., New Jersey, and New York. He has been active in organizing many shows and events in the New Brunswick area, including the first installment of This Town Needs a Parade and the 431 Albus Cavus Gallery in Highland Park. He is a coLAB Arts visual arts producer and is presently interning at the digital media arts center, Harvestworks in Manhattan. He is currently learning the programming language, ‘Processing,’ to build audio/video synthesizers out of micro-controllers. His website is http://alloverthewhere.org. He can be reached at reidbingham@gmail.com.
