Several New Currency artists recently featured on ArtSlant.

The School of Visual Arts' MFA students are a tight nit group, perhaps since their studios are packed together like cubicles. Their graduation excitement could be felt at the Open Studios, as well as the close friendships and dialogue they have with each other. I went after the opening which made it easier to view the work.

Tre Chandler's (Landstuhl, Germany) showed an amusing video of himself playing different women characters. Without any costume he turns to the camera over and over again to say hello with his eyes and body language—while silly feminine character's names flash on the bottom of the screen. Chandler's thesis is a book of ridiculously punchy statements: “Explosive Galleria” and “Why did I do that? Never, ever read the press release.” Rebecca Goyette (Townsend, MA), of Dixie Missile Chicks fame, showed a wacky video of her romancing alover who happens to be an overstuffed dummy dressed in a tuxedo. She romances her man through his stomach-- she enthusiastically feeds him all sorts of heavy delicacies for him only to get turned on by the stripper she hires. I also enjoyed Seong-eun Hong's digitally manipulated images of art vistors in museum galleries. The museum goers are shown holding famous masterpieces while they grok at such things as soda machines.

Kahori Kamiya's (Nagoya, Japan) 3 minute split video, showed her as a conductor in her bathroom side by side a loop of found video clips of pop culture, including fashion vixens and uniform crowd gatherings. She seems to be standing up against mass culture. Vered Sivan's (Israel) installation incorporated dental floss into the walls, floors, in chairs and tilting back a desk—in mass quantities the floss appeared dainty and strong. It was inspired by her working for a dentist in Israel.

Jin Kyoung Bom (Seoul, Korea) cuts up and uses paparazzi pictures in a very technical and visceral way. Her way of keeping the paper format of celebrity images exacerbates the origin's falseness. In some images, she is wearing the printed images and is performing with them in a very personal and meaningful way. I was taken back by the nuance of Naoko Ito's (Japan) work. It took me a few moments of looking at the work of wood and bottles to really see the nuances. She had broken twigs displayed in jars which were stacked in the shape of the original branches. The books turned away from the viewer, with white pages adding to the natural vs order quality of the work. The only book showing had the title of “Silence.”

by Alison Levy
Check out the entire article along with images on ArtSlant