'Loss Generation': Exhibit Examines Motivation Behind Reproducing an Experience, a Phenomena or Cultural By-Product
What:
The University of New Haven (UNH) art exhibition "Loss Generation" offers a play on the technical phrase "generation loss" and the historical term "lost generation." Curated by Christina Vassallo, "Loss Generation" explores the motivation behind reproducing an experience, phenomenon or cultural by-product. Vassallo notes that adherence to the original subject matter is often compromised by the faulty and subjective act of remembering, similar to the generation loss that accumulates between copies of data-like mixtapes or resized digital images. She adds that the artists participating in "Loss Generation" capitalize on this unfaithful process by focusing on the inflated cultural, economic or personal values that surround the true content of the initial experience.
"Loss Generation" includes works by Daniel Bejar, Jonathan Brand, Debbie Hesse, Hiroshi Kumagai, Graham McNamara, Amy Youngs and Frank Zadlo. The exhibition illustrates a yearning for the materialization of Platonic ideals, while at the same time revealing the fascination with inauthenticity. Viewed through the lens of nostalgia, personal narratives are mythologized. Recreating them for the viewer requires the distortion of fact. Transformation, and possibly degradation, occurs through the production of something new from something familiar resulting in a feeling of disillusionment.
When:
Exhibition: Tuesday, February 22 - Friday, March 25, 2011
Reception: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 5-7 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Where:
Seton Art Gallery, Dodds Hall, UNH Main Campus
Christina Vassallo is an independent curator based in Brooklyn, New York. She founded Random Number, a curatorial platform that specializes in promoting emerging artists, in 2007. She made her curatorial debut in 2003 with a series of weekend-long exhibitions in a Queens, New York apartment. She has organized projects for a variety of profit and non-profit venues. Her most recent projects include "System: System," a 40-person exhibition in the abandoned St. Cecilia's convent in Brooklyn; "The Golden Door," a miniature golf course inspired by United States immigration policy for Jersey City Museum; "Bright Nights," a program of digital artworks projected onto the Manhattan Bridge; and "Darkness Descends: Norwegian Art Now," a traveling show about macabre tendencies in contemporary Norwegian art at chashama, a gallery in New York City, and Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Vassallo's projects have been reviewed in "The New York Times," "The Wall Street Journal," "The Star Ledger," Flavorpill, Hyperallergic and Art Fag City. Her work also was featured on WPIX, NY1, and New Jersey Public Television and Radio. In addition to her Random Number projects, she is currently the adjunct curator at Flux Factory. Vassallo previously served as associate director of Kinz, Tillou + Feigen gallery and ART&IDEA gallery in New York City. She has been an assistant curator at the American Federation of Arts. She holds a bachelor's degree in art history and a master's degree in visual arts management from New York University.
For more information on exhibit-related events contact Seton Gallery Director Kerry O'Grady at 203-931-6065 or www.newhaven.edu/18391.
