SPEAKING RITUAL READING BODY
Art is a mouth-process that speaks a language-material. Dave McKenzie (A '00, F '11) and Elijah Burgher (A '11) utilize their own likenesses and bodies to speak to the power of the interior/exterior creation of identity and agency. Through sculpture and performance, McKenzie asks us to examine the relationship of the private and public persona to contemporary culture and our sense of self. Burgher binds the act and performance of drawing to the embodiment of desire and the powerful potential of interpersonal connection. For both McKenzie and Burgher, language (written and spoken), ritual (magical and mundane), and the self (corpus, mentis, and animae) are intrinsically selfsame. Dave McKenzie and Elijah Burgher met at Skowhegan in 2011. They will reunite in this year's Whitney Biennial. This conversation will feature moderation by Wes Miller (A '02).
The conversation at The Drawing Center will coincide with Action + Object + Exchange, the first Open Session exhibition, with artists Eleanor Aldrich (A '12), Derek Dunlop, Heather Hart (A '05), Yara Pina, Andrew Ross (A '11), Lauren Seiden, and Barbara Weissberger. Open Sessions is a two-year exhibition platform for artists to find new approaches for contextualizing and exhibiting their work, through conversation, public programs, and collaborative gallery installations. Each artist in Action + Object + Exchange reveals a transformative process through the work's end result: images become objects, drawings become sculptural, symbols become concrete.
skowheganCONVERSATIONS is a discussion series celebrating the significance of the dialogue that takes place outside of the studio, the classroom, and the gallery. Many generative moments at Skowhegan happen between formal discussions, critiques, and lectures, when participants and faculty have the opportunity to delve deeply into the topics that inform their work and practices. These moments happen while lounging after dinner, on the lawn in the afternoon sun, and in a myriad of other landscapes and times when boundaries are dissolved, and real discourse can take place.