Image courtesy of Matthew Bogdanow, Kathy Feng and Abbey Zhang.
BFA Project 2020: RECURSION
March 26 – April 6, 2020
@sfugalleries
PLEASE NOTE: AS OF MARCH 18, 2020 AUDAIN GALLERY IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF OUR PUBLICS.
RECURSION HAS BEEN RE-IMAGINED FOR INSTAGRAM AND CAN BE FOLLOWED HERE.
zeenah salam alsamarrai, jesse blanchard, Matthew Bogdanow, Sylvia Burtenshaw, Keting Dong, kathy feng, Olivia Luo, Janice Ma, Vitória Monteiro, Aynaz Parkas, Minnie Yung, and Abbey Zhang.
Yes, I do re-use images (just like words).
— John Baldassari1
RECURSION is an exhibition of SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts' (SCA) third-year Visual Art students presented in collaboration with the Audain Visual Artist in Residence program.
RECURSION explores the relationship of contemporary practice to histories of artistic influence. Recursion is the art or process of recurring or returning. In the context of computing, recursion is the invocation of a procedure from within itself. The artists in the exhibition call upon histories of artistic influence to engage with, push against and simultaneously acknowledge their position within a continuous fractal-like structure of communication that reverberates through contemporary art.
The works presented in RECURSION take up ideas of originality, the use of references, and practices of translation and citation. The exhibition on Instagram translates the ideas, processes and research related to the physical artworks that were to be installed in the gallery. Each artist's works will be posted over the course of a single day for the duration of the exhibition.
RECURSION has been developed with Alejandro Cesarco, the Spring 2020 Audain Visual Artist in Residence. While Cesarco’s time in Vancouver was cut short, he has continued to work alongside SCA professor Kathy Slade and the students online.
Alejandro Cesarco was born in Montevideo, Uraguay and currently lives in New York. Through different formats and strategies, his practice reflects his recurrent interests in repetition, narrative, and practices of reading and translating. Cesarco's most recent solo exhibitions include A Solo Exhibition, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2019); These Days, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2019); Tactics & Technics, CAC, Vilnius (2019); and Song, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017). In 2011 he represented Uruguay at the 54th Venice Biennial. He has curated exhibitions in the US, Uruguay and Argentina, including sections of the 33 Bienal de Sāo Paulo, Brazil (2018) and ARCO, Madrid (2020). Cesarco is director of the non-profit organization, Art Resources Transfer.
The Audain Visual Artist in Residence (AVAIR) program brings artists and practitioners to Vancouver who have contributed significatnly to the field of contemporary art and whose work resonates with local and international visual art discourses. The visiting artists interact with the students and faculty of the School for the Contemporary Arts as well as the broader visual arts and cultural communities and the community-at-large. In keeping with the experimental nature of the School for the Contemporary Arts the terms of engagement are open and change from artist to artist. The cornerstone of the residency is the sharing of artistic research. The program is generously funded by the Audain Foundation Endowment Fund.
Presented by SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts and the Audain Visual Artist in Residence.
[1] Alejandro Cesarco, ed., Between Artists: John Baldessari, Barbara Bloom (New York: Art Resources Transfer Press, 2011).
