Explore human forms at artist talks with Matthew Angelo Harrison, Norbert Bisky, Hayv Kahraman
Join SCAD deFINE ART 2022 exhibiting artists Norbert Bisky and Hayv Kahraman with SCAD MOA adjunct curator Humberto Moro for a special gallery tour as they share ideas of migration, assimilation, gender, ancestry, and technology that they engage in their work and process.
About the artists
Adopting the language of industrial design and anthropological aesthetics in sculptural forms, Matthew Angelo Harrison (b. 1989, Detroit) combines references to colonialism, African diasporas, and the industrialization of the U.S. This dialogue is manifest in his materials and processes, as he repurposes or represents culturally loaded objects in resin and metal. His explorations center on notions of history, preservation, and progress, and take the shape of “capsules” that problematize or expand on the nature of the object, its circulation, and cultural significance through time. The artist takes a scientific approach to his practice, with the aim of unveiling complex relations to systems that are present and pervasive in daily life.
Chaotic explosions, ambiguous physical struggles between male figures, and nostalgic smiling young models typify the contradictory images in the paintings of Norbert Bisky. The German artist’s canvases are executed with a flat, straightforward application of sumptuously colored paint, laid down in brisk gestures that parallel the dynamism of the works’ content. Drawing on a range of sources, from the Socialist Realism art and propaganda of his youth in the former German Democratic Republic to Christian symbols to homoerotic imagery, the artist presents viewers with complex compositions that suggest — yet ultimately confound — perceptible narratives.
In paintings that embody the complexities of diasporic experience for women, Hayv Kahraman (b. 1981, Baghdad, Iraq) challenges the power and assimilation practices of colonizing states. Informed by her experiences as an émigré from Iraq to Europe and her eventual settling in the U.S., Kahraman’s works explore states of in-betweenness and the othering of refugees. The female figures in her work invert the gaze of the viewer, rejecting the dehumanization of the larger collective of displaced peoples worldwide. Sumptuously rendering her ghostly figures with calligraphic marks in oil paint on brown linen, Kahraman borrows from diverse techniques, from those found in Renaissance painting to Islamic patternmaking.
This in-person event is free and open to the public, and presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2022.