Wisconsin Triennial Brochure 2019

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DANE SCHUMACHER GREEN BAY Self-Taught, 2018 • Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches • Courtesy of the artist Twenty-one-year-old Dane Schumacher insisted on making art before he even turned two. As he continues into adulthood passionately honing his innate talent, he simultaneously confronts a chorus of criticism about the impracticalities of his career choice. The artist fleshes out his anxieties about his future in each of his immaculately detailed self-portraits. In Self-Taught, he paints himself donning a smock and a pair of checkered Vans while diligently drawing pictures with Crayola markers. Having outgrown the childhood art table where he sits, the artist nevertheless appears happily absorbed in this whimsical depiction of the childlike imagination and creativity he associates with pursing an art career. By contrast, Disillusioned presents Schumacher’s hypothetical portrait of himself with a traditional nine-to-five career: absentmindedly holding a floppy stuffed animal puppet in one of his heavily veined hands, the artist’s expression is one of pure disenchantment. PETER SCHWEI DODGEVILLE In the Landscape, 2010–2019 • Oil and water interactions, acrylic, pencil, oil, and colored pencil on canvas, 98 x 100 inches • Courtesy of the artist Peter Schwei’s monumental canvas overwhelms the senses with its sheer scale, intricate level of detail, and shifting sense of perspective. In monochromatic tones of gray, he depicts a forested landscape where trees tower over thick tangles of underbrush. Rather than creating his composition with brushed lines, Schwei achieves form, tonal variation, and texture by facilitating chance interactions between water and oil-based mixtures. Working with a small section of the unstretched canvas, he pools water onto its surface and then applies drops of oil paint combined with different liquid agents. The mixture disperses rapidly, organizing itself into dizzying patterns that dry onto the canvas as the water evaporates. The result is not only a landscape, but a physical record of how natural elements in the world interact with one another. Tying together image and process, Schwei points to the infinite complexity and profound beauty of the world around us. ANDERS SHAFER EAU CLAIRE Childhood of Chaïm Soutine, 2016–2019 • Acrylic on paper, 22 x 29 inches • Courtesy of the artist Utilizing the concept of a storyboard, Anders Shafer visually documents the lives of the artists he admires and those that influence his artistic practice. Artist and historian, Shafer creates what he calls “immersion” paintings in which he conducts in-depth research into an artist’s life and then reinterprets the historical narrative though his own creative vision. In Childhood of Chaïm Soutine, Shafer paints the famous artist revered for his unique form of Expressionism — one that served as the precursor to Abstract Expressionism. Shafer’s work not only harnesses the gestural, individualized style of Soutine, but recounts the incredible history of the French artist’s life and art. PRANAV SOOD MADISON Who is She?, 2018 • Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 inches • Courtesy of the artist and René Heiden Pranav Sood’s intricate, pattern-heavy paintings draw on the artist’s personal relationships. Influenced by Indian, Persian, and Egyptian art, Sood emphasizes the flatness of the canvas while employing bold lines, strong profiles, and symbolic motifs. The artist also references op art in his work and each of the figures in his fantastical compositions inhabit a veritable wonderland of vibrant color, whimsy, and a surreal graphic sense of space. These works tell the story of a quest for love between a young couple as they embark on the journey toward adulthood and leave their homes behind. Sood complicates the cultural norms experienced in his native India, challenging expectations on how love should be formed and with whom. The vibrating patterns and repetitive geometric vocabulary of these works investigate visual language across cultures while addressing the universal quest for love. 7
SPATULA&BARCODE MADISON Recipe Box, 2019 • Performance and installation, times, dates, and dimensions variable • Courtesy of the artists A collaborative duo comprised of artists Laurie Beth Clark and Michael Peterson, Spatula&Barcode extend artmaking into the realm of daily experience, where human interactions are themselves the work of art. With the goal of bringing people together to share stories and spark conversations, their art often takes the form of food-based events. Recipe Box, their project for the Triennial, is comprised of hundreds of handwritten index cards that record generations of their families’ heirloom recipes. Presenting their personal archive of family recipes, Spatula&Barcode ask us to consider how memory, history, and culture are both preserved and understood through various foodways. They take this idea one step further, inviting community members to attend and contribute to hosted potluck dinners in MMoCA’s lobby — a series of “performances” that aim to foster human connection through the actual consumption of culture. SPOOKY BOOBS MADISON You Have the Right to Remain a .: 8008069 Aggressive, 2018 • Digital print, 24 x 18 inches • Courtesy of the artists An artist collective formed by Amy Cannestra, Myszka Lewis, and Maggie Snyder, SPOOKY BOOBS (SB) is a collaborative effort that uses art, language, and design to re-appropriate sexist and misogynistic language often leveled against women. SB uses words that are often deployed as weapons to diminish, minimize, and shame women, and integrates them into the designs of innocuous wallpaper, such as in their series, The Patterns’ Vicious Influence. The series explores how these accusations (bossy, high-maintenance, crazy), oversaturate our lexicon to the point of becoming unnoticeable. Many of the same words are used in SB’s series You Have the Right to Remain a , which visualizes how hostile language is used to actively subjugate those not adhering to patriarchal language. People are “arrested” for their behavior and given a corresponding label (aggressive, bossy, frigid), in which SB seeks to validate our behaviors in spite of these labels. ARIANA VAETH SHOREWOOD Midnight Delight, 2018 • Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches • Courtesy of the artist Ariana Vaeth’s large-scale, autobiographical paintings chronicle relationships in the artist’s life. Capturing seemingly ordinary moments between friends — watching television, chatting on the couch — Vaeth infuses each snapshot with a heightened sense of drama. Placing herself within the composition, Vaeth is able to occupy the dual role of creator and participant, positioned to take part in the everyday drama of the scene around her. In her work Caitlyn Cold Day, Vaeth directly stares at the viewer while wearing a t-shirt featuring an image of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Confronting the audience subverts any societal expectations of a traditionally demure female subject or her role as an object to be admired, as in the famous work worn by the artist. Vaeth is able to seize a feminist perspective on the domestic interior painting, while directing and capturing our gaze. LESLIE VANSEN MILWAUKEE Crwth, 2017 • Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches • Courtesy of the artist The formal elements of color, surface, space, and movement play strongly in Leslie Vansen’s abstract paintings. Like labyrinthine pathways, layers of swirling and twisting lines engulf her canvas, hinting at the artist’s interest in the movement of people through space. However, rather than representing a single moment or identifiable action, her paintings instead express the accumulation of multiple, repeated actions across place and time — the residue of human activity on the urban landscape. This notion is reinforced by her methodical application of paint, which is itself a study in duration, movement, repetition, and accumulation as she overlaps and intersperses multiple layers of painted acrylic lines and tape. Although Vansen looks to her everyday surroundings for inspiration, her paintings are suggestive rather than illustrative, describing through abstraction the ineffability of time, memory, and bodily experience. 8
Page 1: WISCONSIN TRIENNIAL 2019 An exhibit
Page 4 and 5: SAIF ALSAEGH MILWAUKEE 1991 (video
Page 6 and 7: RACHAEL GRIFFIN MADISON Plum, 2016
Page 8 and 9: DIANE LEVESQUE KENOSHA Dancing Bear
Page 12 and 13: SHANE WALSH MILWAUKEE Xpressor 3, 2
Page 14 and 15: MMo CA BOARD OF TRUSTEES Officers T
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Wisconsin Triennial Brochure 2019

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