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Sequence Now!
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 13, 2013-6-9pm
Show Runs: July 13 - August 24, 2013
Featuring work by: Nate Booth, Coleman Gilbert, Geoffrey Hamerlinck, Noah Harmon, Ursula Murray Husted, Stefani McDade, Caitlin Skaalrud, Brett Von Schlosser and Eric Schuster.
Curated by Andrea Carlson
Sequence Now! is an exhibition of work on the ideas of rapid change, transformation, metamorphosis or deterioration in visual storytelling. The narratives of feature length graphic novels or comics are often peppered with characters that subvert their identity almost as soon as it is understood. This exhibition spotlights the moment of change in short, pared down comic samplings that exist as a few pages or a single image. These story bites may implicate a larger work or are displayed in their entirety as a concise gesture to the idea of transformation.
Sequential Art is a blanket category that covers graphic storytelling from comics to hieroglyphs. Across many cultures and locations the motifs of tombs, monuments and cave walls chart the succession of events in the lives of anonymous individuals standing in for the cultural archetypes of a society, defining a populations’ narrative as it is preserved in history. Through the amalgam of static, frozen images a sense of time and transformation emerges. The transformation of a character relies on our imaginations, on our willingness to participate, to make visual analogies to lives and experiences that both define us and challenge us.
Nate Booth's work sits on the intersection of myth and experience. He is interested in a hidden world, how imagination shapes existence with elements of tragedy just beneath the cloak of comedy revealing the complexities of the human condition. Booth exhibits widely and teaches at North Dakota State University.
Coleman Gilbert is a recent graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. His comics pull lavish worlds out of seemingly routine situations. Gilbert states, “I like to mix familiar and uncanny, searching for a way to express something both universal and personal.”
Everything Geoffrey Hamerlinck touches turns to gold. His work often combines good things, like pizza or candy, with other good things, like heavy petting and bearded smiles. Hamerlinck holds an MFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago and teaches at Saint Cloud State University.
Noah Harmon works often depict heads as idea containers, and as such his inspiration spans all of pop culture. For this exhibition, Harmon presents four images charting the evolution of rapper Gucci Mane as he alters his appearance with various tattoos transforming himself into the definition of media persona, a self realized caricature. Harmon recently created the International Conspiracy Research Institute, search for it on Facebook, as part of Artists in Storefronts 4.
With a hand for draftsmanship Ursula Murray Husted’s comics are tapestries for survivors, those who persevere a transforming voyage. Some of her recent works include Drawing on Yourself and Lions of Valletta. Husted has a PhD from the University of Minnesota and teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Stout.
Stefani McDade works depict aggressive sexuality and raw carnality. Her figures are forever frozen in the moment they are maimed, or they have asserted a dominance that only a hybridized lady-tiger can exude. McDade works as a freelance artist and illustrator in the Twin Cities.
Caitlin Skaalrud reaches into the psyche for its limitless narrative potential. On her latest project, Houses of the Holy, Skaalrud describes her protagonist as, “in search of her essential, endlessly renewable "self" and finds her idea of herself is running out.” She creates a character in infinite transformation, destroying and recreating identity. Skaalrud is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and a 2012 Xeric Grant Award Winner for her book Sea Change: A Choose-Your-Own-Way Story.
It is true, Brett Von Schlosser’s work is born out of the Minneapolis comic community, but his work is more expansive than any one influence as it spans monsters, motifs and tropes. His works reflect on, in his words, “the universal desires for mystery.” Von Schlosser is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and can be found tabling works, such as Ballad Of the Intrepideers and Blood of the Imbeciles at various conventions.
Eric Schuster is a prolific visual storyteller of the inky variety. His recent works include Prizon Food (vol. 1&2), High Score and GODZILLA-SUIT. He is interested in how cultures project very real fears into fictitious monsters. Of monsters, Schuster states, “From the Titans and devils of ancient mythology, to Frankenstein's monster as a creature birthed from man's scientific hubris, to sinister moon men appearing in one of the first films ever produced, to giant irradiated creatures as stand-ins for weapons of mass destruction, to post-human cyborgs and robots overthrowing and enslaving their human creators…the monster has been a constant staple in cautionary storytelling.”
About the curator:
Andrea Carlson lives and works in Minneapolis. In 2003 she earned a BA from the University of Minnesota and an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. Carlson first exhibited at SooVAC in Untitled 4 and then had her first solo exhibition, Culture Cop, at Soo in 2006. She now serves on Soo Visual Arts Center’s Curatorial Panel. Her mixed media works on paper exhibit widely, including a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian’s American Indian Museum Heye Center and group exhibitions at Power Plant Contemporary in Toronto as well as the 2009 Venice Biennial. Currently Carlson’s work is on display at the National Gallery of Ottawa on loan from the permanent collection of the National Museum of Canada. Her work has received several distinctions including the Minnesota State Arts Board (2006/2011) and McKnight Foundation Fellowship (2007-08). Carlson frequently uses graphic novels and B-Movies as inspiration for her own visual arts practice, inspiring the concept for Sequence Now!.
