Wisconsin Triennial Brochure 2019

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SAIF ALSAEGH MILWAUKEE 1991 (video still), 2018 • 11:55 minutes • Courtesy of the artist In 2011, Saif Alsaegh moved from Iraq to the United States, leaving behind the endless violence, deafening explosions, and constant fear of death that plagued everyday life in Baghdad. Through the medium of video, he unravels his memories of war and explores the strange tranquility of his life in Wisconsin. His experimental style of narration is most poignant in 1991, a video featuring a phone conversation between the artist and his mother, Bushra, an Iraqi immigrant currently living in Turkey. The film captures footage of Alsaegh cooking and engaging in other routine activities while video chatting with his mom, who tells the story of his birth, in 1991, in the midst of the Gulf War. Bringing together the virtual landscape of the phone, the bucolic landscape of Wisconsin, and the fragmented landscape of memory, Alsaegh presents a poetic meditation on war, displacement, separation, and familial love. EMILY ARTHUR MADISON Cherokee by Blood, 2018 • Aspen wood, screenprint, cast bronze, and dried silk • Courtesy of the artist For Cherokee by Blood, Emily Arthur collected dead songbirds in collaboration with a zoology lab and then cast the birds in bronze. The bronze birds are delicately shrouded in silk organza and placed in wooden boxes — a presentation reminiscent of a viewing at a funeral. Printed on the silk is text from a series of documents dating from 1906 to 1910 that contain interviews of over 125,000 people who applied to the US Court of Claims in an effort to retain their tribal enrollment within the Cherokee Nation. Traumatic accounts of removal of Cherokee peoples by the government can be read on the silk that cradles the dead birds, placing environmental destruction and Cherokee displacement at the forefront of Arthur’s work. TOM BERENZ MILWAUKEE Drowning in a Bathtub, 2018 • Acrylic and oil on canvas, 72 x 94 inches • Courtesy of the artist Worried about the potential for disaster ruining a perfect moment, Tom Berenz builds up paint on the canvas into what he calls “piles of floating information,” which resemble crashes and shattered worlds. In Drowning in a Bathtub, diluted, watery lines and the black-and-white tiled floor provide a sense of space, while the jumble of fleshy limbs and abstract shapes lend a sense of unease. Drawing the viewer in with bright pinks and blues, the angst filled bathtub overflows off the bottom edge of the painting, opening up the image for personal introspection and interpretation. TIMOTHY BRENNER MADISON Purple and Yellow Still Life, 2018 • Acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8 inches • Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee Timothy Brenner’s still life paintings are comprised of layers upon layers of acrylic paint that result in an incredibly tactile and textured composition. Brenner developed a visual iconography in which he paints a series of reoccurring icons, symbols, and objects from his life in various environments and color combinations. For his series of decorative planters, Brenner fastidiously replicated the same composition in several iterations. The completed paintings were then repainted on a smaller scale for inclusion in yet another still life: Still Life Shelf. Extending his selfreferential iconography even further, Brenner reconstructs the shelf depicted in the painting as a three-dimensional object, replete with hand-painted wood grain, on which a selection of the physical paintings are then displayed. 1
JENNIFER BUCHEIT MADISON 100%, from the series Again & Again: A Reflection on Consumer Culture, 2017 • Archival pigment print on post-consumer substrate, 17 x 15 inches • Courtesy of the artist Jennifer Bucheit’s photographic series Again & Again: A Reflection on Consumer Culture addresses the rise of American consumerism and the inordinate amount of paper waste discarded in landfills — with Wisconsin being the number one paper producer in the world. Mindful of the excess waste, Bucheit began collecting her family’s paper trash, which she then carefully deconstructed and photographed in a still life setting. The images of the paper packaging were then digitally compiled and printed back onto one side of the original packaging — reinforcing the themes of repetition, reuse, and recycling. From shopping bags to takeout cartons, the resulting works of art reveal our irreverent consumption while unveiling the potential for turning the disposable into the admired. ED ERDMANN MENOMONIE Dismas, 2017 • Soil collected from the banks of Red Cedar River on canvas, 24 x 24 inches • Courtesy of the artist Growing up on a farm in the Mississippi Valley, Erdmann developed a profound respect for the land. As an artist, the physical landscape informed a series of paintings that use natural elements — dirt, sediment, and sticks collected from the Red Cedar and Mississippi rivers — to generate works of art that are a literal manifestation of his environment. Highlighting the natural rhythms, lines, and layers produced by water eroding soil, Erdmann creates paintings from dirt and sediment that are part land art, part color field painting. When the resulting work is placed on a gallery wall, it serves as a poignant reminder to pause and appreciate the inherent beauty of the natural world. MARIANNE FAIRBANKS MADISON Heart of Being 3, 2018 • Hand woven on a digital loom (TC-1) tencel, acrylic, nylon, wool, 41 x 21 x 4 inches • Courtesy of the artist Marianne Fairbanks stretches textiles to their formal and conceptual limits. Heart of Being 3 is a jacquard weaving with an eye-catching, fluorescent-pink backside that is presented as the front. A rectangular section is cut out from the middle of the piece and flops forward toward the viewer, revealing part of the metallic silver frontside. In jacquard textiles, the design is woven into the fabric itself rather than printed or embroidered on top of it, which means that the pattern is created together with the cloth: the image thus becomes the object, and the object is the image. Fairbanks emphasizes the unique material structure of jacquard by weaving into her piece the actual patterns that comprise the visual language of weaving — the crisscrossing of intersecting threads at a 90-degree angle. Fairbanks thus presents us with a striking and self-reflexive fabric: a weaving about weaving. BEN GRANT MILWAUKEE Untitled 115, 2016 • Acrylic, automotive paint, ball point pen, colored pencil, enamel, graphite, oil, and spray paint on canvas over panel, 47 x 47 inches • Courtesy of the artist and Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee Ben Grant combs through the history of art to recover techniques and processes that have long been forgotten. He reworks these painterly oddities into contemporary compositions that he describes as “on the edge of falling apart.” The layering of technique and media — from ball point pen to automotive paint — results in an intricately patterned composition that is visually stimulating. Grant’s formal explorations hint at representation without completely giving way to abstraction, inviting the viewer in for a closer look. For Grant, this interactive inquiry is essential to his practice as it validates these complex, layered paintings that can be just as engaging as a representational, narrative composition. 2
Page 1: WISCONSIN TRIENNIAL 2019 An exhibit
Page 6 and 7: RACHAEL GRIFFIN MADISON Plum, 2016
Page 8 and 9: DIANE LEVESQUE KENOSHA Dancing Bear
Page 10 and 11: DANE SCHUMACHER GREEN BAY Self-Taug
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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